I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for others tobenefit)?

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 00:18:53 +0000 (UTC), Ned Turnbull
wrote:

On Fri, 29 Aug 2014 21:03:18 -0300, Shadow wrote:

Zip it, make a torrent and upload it to a tracker. Post the
magnet URL here.

That's a very interesting idea!
I have *never* uploaded (seeded?) a torrent in my life!
[I have downloaded torrents, e.g., my Linux distribution.]

So, I will see if I can figure out *how* to "seed" a torrent.
If I do seed, can I keep my IP address anonymous (since it's fixed) when
I create a torrent?

Your torrent client will create a torrent for you. No IP
address is involved. When you upload it to a tracker, they will get
your IP. But a hosts file would not draw any more attraction than a
private email letter. OK, OK. Someone will be watching.
The problem is when you seed it you will have to be online, so
that unique seeder will be your IP. One you get people downloading,
their IPs will appear too, so it will be hard to see which one you
are. Which is why when people seed new stuff it's usually from
multiple hosts.
Even so, you will be far more "private" than if you upload to
Dropbox.


once a popup happens, I simply put it in the hosts file, and that
popup never happens again. Of course, as you imply, I don't go *back*,
years later, and revisit them.

So, like any hosts file, you'll have to decide for yourself if you
want the ones I've added. If it's worthwhile, I can figure out a command
that will strip out of my current hosts file all the hosts that are in
the MVP hosts file, so, the result would be *just* the eight thousand
that I have added myself.

There is windows freeware that can do that, or just convert
both to Unix text and do a diff.

You can then *look* at those eight thousand, and judge for yourself if
you want to add them or not. If that would be more useful, I can upload
just my additions, instead.

Note: But, of course, then the user has to *merge* the two, which is
easy for many of us on Linux but Windows users may have a problem
because of the different way Linux and Windows stores ASCII text file
line feeds and the end of file character.

I really don't mind ads. As long as they are not too annoying,
like that girl doing froggy jumps or whatever on the Piratebay pages.
Oh ... that's geolocation and analytics. Pronto ... blocked.

127.0.0.1 main.exoclick.com
127.0.0.1 static-ssl.exoclick.com
127.0.0.1 ads.exoclick.com
127.0.0.1 syndication.exoclick.com

I just block the geolocation, analytics and (best I can)
canvassing stuff. And of course, any social media links.
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

On Fri, 29 Aug 2014 22:16:45 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote:

| Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit?
|

I certainly wouldn't want a HOSTS file that big. The vast majority
of the entires are bound to be sites I'll never visit, either first-
party or third-party. I know there are many sites like that already
in the MVP HOSTS file. My own HOSTS file has about 250 entries.
Even that is more than is needed. The vast majority of sleazy third-
party domains linked from webpages are going to a small number
of sites, like doubleclick, google-analytics.com, googletagmanager.com,
googletagservices.com, 2o7.net, valueclick, facebook.com, etc.

Hey !!! That's MY hosts file. Thief !!

[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

Another option, which you may already know about,
is to block 3rd-party images. In Firefox/Pale Moon
that used to be an option in the settings. With the
corrupting influence from Google it was changed and
hidden. (Mozilla get nearly all of their excessive
income from Google.) But the setting is still there in
about:config
set (create if necessary): permissions.default.image 3

That also seems to block other external files. It can
make some websites ugly, in cases where a CSS file and/or
images are loaded from a different domain. But for the
most part it works OK. The vast majority of ads are coming
from 3rd-party spyware servers like Google/Doubleclick, so
with 3rd-party images blocked you allow honest ads -- the
ones that are actually on the website you chose to visit --
and you block spyware ads.

There are also the issues of script and iframes. If you
only care about blocking ads then that won't matter, and
you might not want to put up with the hassle. But if you
care about being tracked, take a look at this code in the
pastebin page you linked:

iframe src="//www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?

Code like that is in most commercial webpages. It's loading
a webpage from Facebook into a iframe, which is essentially
a second browser window. What you see is just a small Facebook
button. If you block 3rd-party images you might not even
see that. But technically you've visited Facebook. The parameters
in the page request tell information about where you're coming
from, and by requesting the page you send your IP address,
userAgent, etc to Facebook. That means that Facebook is
following you all around the Internet, even if you've never visited
their website. If you have a Facebook account then their iframes
allow them to know what you're doing when you're not logged in.
Even if you just allow first-party cookies they can probably know
who you are easily. The iframe they use makes their hidden webpage
a page that you "chose" to visit, so any cookies loaded from it
are first-party. But that's just icing on the cake for their datamining
operation. Your IP is probably enough for them to figure out who you
are, and to track your movements online.

Your massive HOSTS file is blocking at least 5 domains from
Tomshardware.com, which you may never visit. It's blocking
image servers from various countries. It even blocks f**k.org
and zerofreepopcorn.com, whatever they are. But it doesn't
block Facebook. It doesn't even block google-analytics.com,
which is tracking you from the vast majority of webpages you
visit, including your pastebin page. That's the trouble with a
giant HOSTS file. It's likely to be 98% irrelevant, and while
you're blocking the oddball ad server from some obscure page
you'll probably never visit, you're not necessarily blocking the
sites that matter most.

Also worth a try is Acrylic, which is a free DNS server program.
It acts as a proxy and has it's own HOSTS file that allow wildcards.
So you can block things like *.doubleclick.net and *.doubleclick.com
to block all Google/Doubleclick ads. The normal HOSTS file requires
adding each possible subdomain. If you look at your HOSTS file
you'll see a great deal of redundancy due to that problem. Ad
servers can just keep changing the subdomain to thwart your
HOSTS file. You might have entries for 200 Doubleclick subdomains,
but you don't have an entry for the one they might create next week.

Mayayana wrote on 8/29/2014 10:16 PM:
| Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit?
|

I certainly wouldn't want a HOSTS file that big. The vast majority
of the entires are bound to be sites I'll never visit, either first-
party or third-party. I know there are many sites like that already
in the MVP HOSTS file. My own HOSTS file has about 250 entries.
Even that is more than is needed. The vast majority of sleazy third-
party domains linked from webpages are going to a small number
of sites, like doubleclick, google-analytics.com, googletagmanager.com,
googletagservices.com, 2o7.net, valueclick, facebook.com, etc.
I use a Desktop script occasionally to parse webpages for URLs
and rarely find one that I don't already have in my HOSTS file.

But if you want to make it available to people then why not get
your own website? You can have a fullscale website for less than
$10/month, and have as many email addresses as you can ever
use with your own domain.

That's the whole idea of the Internet, after all. It's a public
commons where all can take part. There's no reason to regard
it as merely a set of ad-supported services.


Heck, you don't even need $10 a month. I found a free one, limited
space but I'm sure 2 gigs maybe, but I only host a web page. I like
playing with html code, so this gives me an outlet.

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:05:55 -0300, Shadow wrote:

The problem is when you seed it you will have to be online, so
that unique seeder will be your IP.

Can I seed from Tor?

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:09:58 -0300, Shadow wrote:

Hey !!! That's MY hosts file. Thief !!

Actually, it *could* have elements of everyone's hosts file!
I culled the entries from a huge variety of sources.

Ned Turnbull wrote on 8/29/2014 7:46 PM:
Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit?

I have a fantastic hosts file, improved over years, always adding
the MVP hosts file to it, and adding about a thousand obnoxious
domains that I've run into such that I almost never see a valid
popup browser (they pop up, but they are all unfound). I never
see in-page ads either.
snip

I'm going to ask, but let's not dwell on this, but in the vein of this
subject: How does one go about finding out all these bogus host
addresses so you can build your own HOST file. Or even, other than
the one link I did see, are there starter lists available?

This all sounds like a great idea, and everyone SHOULD be doing it.
You've all made a great case between all the posts. I just can't
figure out how to get the links. I do clear cookies from my browser,
and I guess those would be a good start. Things like click.net,
adtracket.com etc. You can be sure when the names are that clear.

On 30/08/14 01:46, Ned Turnbull wrote:
Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit?

the hosts file was never intended for this amount of hosts and this
makes things slower...

I have a fantastic hosts file, improved over years, always adding
the MVP hosts file to it, and adding about a thousand obnoxious
domains that I've run into such that I almost never see a valid
popup browser (they pop up, but they are all unfound). I never
see in-page ads either.

Yes, I know that many of you use pop up blockers, and hence you have
no need for a great hosts file. Yes I know many of you use noscript,
and ghostery and all sorts of spyware blasters.

Hosts file has the negative side, you need to copy it to each and every
machine you have, including portable devices, it's slow too and don't
prevent popups from popping up. It's never been the recommended way to
block sites, use proper methods for that like privoxy or addblokcer
plugins. Privoxy don't need much maintenance as it uses regular
expressions to find the advertisement, so it can block such which you
haven't seen before.


This isn't about that.
This is simply about the hosts text file. Period.
And how to upload it

There are loads of free file hosting, just use one of those.


All this is asking is *where* I can post my excellent HOSTS file
so that others may benefit from using it?

It's looooooong (it's almost 25K lines long!).

It's too long, shouldn't be much more than 79 bytes, if it's that short,
then it's excellent, if it's longer it's a bad one.


I just want to post it, as a text file, so others can use it and
improve it. What location do you suggest?

You can get my improved one here at once:

127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain
::1 localhost localhost.localdomain


--

//Aho

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 09:46:58 -0400, Big Al wrote:

I'm going to ask, but let's not dwell on this, but in the vein of this
subject: How does one go about finding out all these bogus host
addresses so you can build your own HOST file. Or even, other than
the one link I did see, are there starter lists available?

Most browsers have a key shortcut to see the source of the
page you are viewing.
In Firefox, it's CTRL-U
Look at the links, and put the ones that are obviously not
supposed to be there in your hosts file.
You will have to close the browser and flush your DNS cache
for the changes to take effect.
Read up on how to make a hosts file and where it should be
placed. Some AV software will not allow you to make one (Avira for
example) unless you go into advanced configuration settings.
[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy - Google 2012

On 30/08/14 15:46, Big Al wrote:
Ned Turnbull wrote on 8/29/2014 7:46 PM:
Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit?

Just a reminder, no one benefits from a such list and they will never do.

I have a fantastic hosts file, improved over years, always adding
the MVP hosts file to it, and adding about a thousand obnoxious
domains that I've run into such that I almost never see a valid
popup browser (they pop up, but they are all unfound). I never
see in-page ads either.
snip

I'm going to ask, but let's not dwell on this, but in the vein of this
subject: How does one go about finding out all these bogus host
addresses so you can build your own HOST file. Or even, other than
the one link I did see, are there starter lists available?

This all sounds like a great idea, and everyone SHOULD be doing it.

No, it's not a great idea, just to show how stupid it can be, back in
2012 Australia decided to block a bite more than 1000 sites as they
contained material which ASIC did consider harmful, by blocking those
1000 IP-numbers, they blocked 250000 sites amongst others Melbourne Free
University.

By blocking an IP, you will exclude many other sites than the one you do
not want to get advertisements from.

You also make your internet slower, not just for browsing, but for all
other activity too.

If you want to block sites, then use proper tools like privoxy or those
add blocker plug-ins, as this way you can get rid of the advertisement
without blocking legitimate content and you aren't slowing down for
other protocols.

--

//Aho

Ned Turnbull writes:

Here are ~10,000 additional domains I've found that "I" would avoid:
http://pastebin.com/WJy5WH2c

I picked this up, sampled a few, and fed it to host/nslookup.

Lots of them don't resolve at all, so why would anyone want to enter
addresses on one's hosts file remapping to localhost hosts that don't seem
to exist, or expired?

I think you should clean your additions of those, maybe keep them in a
separate file and check periodically if they came back.

-- HASM

127.0.0.1 main.exoclick.com
127.0.0.1 static-ssl.exoclick.com
127.0.0.1 ads.exoclick.com
127.0.0.1 syndication.exoclick.com

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
quote
Important Note: The HOSTS file now contains a change in the prefix in
the HOSTS entries to "0.0.0.0" instead of the usual "127.0.0.1".
This was done to resolve a slowdown issue that occurs with the change
Microsoft made in the "TCP loopback interface" in Win8.1.

This change in the prefix should not affect users. I've had some
feedback and COMODO antivirus, Homer Webserver and System Mechanic
seems to have issues with the "0.0.0.0" prefix ... to resolve this
issue:
You can use the "Replace" function in Notepad to convert the entries,
or HostsMan (see below) has an option for converting the entries to
"0.0.0.0".
/quote

I assume that " resolve this issue" refers to changing from 127.0.0.1
to 0.0.0.0

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:16:04 -0500, M.L. wrote:

I assume that " resolve this issue" refers to changing from 127.0.0.1
to 0.0.0.0

There's also a dhcp service that needs to be turned off,
which, on very long hosts files, would otherwise cause a problem.

This is a bug in Windows that is about 20 years old, so, they
"may" have finally fixed it by how (I don't know as I no longer
boot to Windows ever since they killed XP I went to Linux).

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:27:12 +0100, John wrote:

Just for curiosity, why didn't you put all of your additions into the
Hosts file after a comment like "#

There are a hundred ways to do it, but, I've been combining
dozens of hosts files from all over in addition to adding
my own entries, and the pound sign makes each line unique
even when the entry isn't unique.

So, since I've been combining files of containing thousands
of lines of hosts, the easiest way to sort them uniquely
is to strip out *all* extraneous characters.

For example, here is my alias for munging the default MVP
hosts file prior to inserting into my hosts file:

alias cleanhost='cat HOSTS | grep -v 127.0.0.1 | grep -v "::" | sed -e "s/^M//g" -e "s/[ ]/ /g" -e "s/ / /g" -e "s/#.*$//" | sed -e "s/ $//" | sed -e "s/0.0.0.0/127.0.0.1/" | sort -u hosts.txt'

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:21:41 +0100, John wrote:

Even if all you ever do is ****-off Goggle that is a fine and worthy
bit of work you have done.

Yeah, all their trackers are in that hosts file!