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

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 14:09:49 -0400, Mayayana wrote:

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.

Very true.

I, for one, wish the HOSTS file format allowed for regular expressions.

Ned Turnbull wrote:

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 15:56:19 +0200, J.O. Aho wrote:

Hosts file has the negative side, you need to copy it to each and every
machine you have, including portable devices

Portable devices require root, unfortunately.

Which makes this idiotic method impractical there

But, how can copying a text file to Windows, Linux, and Mac be harder
than trying to get a huge number of programs to perform the same task
to work on all these platforms?

That task is "slowing down each and every network connection"?
Brilliant, you found it

Besides, the hosts file works for all protocols, whereas most of these
other methods work only for some protocols.

Yes, it will slow down each connection, regardless of protocal

There's no way there is any easier yet more complete & yet totally
portable method than the hosts file method. Yes, there *are* other
methods, but let's keep this thread to just the hosts file method.

Yes, a very "portable method" to build a completely unmaintainable file

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:04:44 +0200, J.O. Aho wrote:

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

I don't understand.

Are you intimating no one benefits from the MVP HOSTS file?
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Many sites must be recommending the HOSTS file for some reason
e.g., Lifehacker, TechRepublic, SomoneWhoCares, etc.
http://lifehacker.com/5817447/how-to...the-hosts-file
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/win...ws-hosts-file/
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

BTW, that last URL is yet another HOSTS file which I will
include in mine, but since it's already published, I'll let
you integrate it into yours.

NOTE: The effort is in culling out duplicates, which I do
simply by removing all extraneous lines, and then removing
extraneous characters in the good lines.

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

How does one go about finding out all these bogus host
addresses so you can build your own HOST file.

Hi Big Al,
Here's another one I just found by accident:
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

I will run my scripts on that one to see if it adds
any value to my existing hosts file (which is 2/3
MVP HOSTS and 1/3 other hosts).

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 14:23:42 -0500, J² wrote:

You need to verify that the additions you have put
on your file over the years are still relevant. There
is a program available for download that will check
each and every one, and it takes hours, if not days,
to check as many as you have. I'm sorry but I can't
recall the name of this utility.

I suspect I can run a ping, and, to capture the
results in a script, to test them.

But, really, I have never typed in a URL that I *wanted*
to go to, that came back *accidentally* blocked by my
hosts file, so, it's not really a concern of mine.

Of course, *you* might have it as a concern, as I would
think you should, since you have no idea *how* these domains
got into "my" hosts file.

BTW, you can *skip* "my" hosts file, and just use the trusted
ones out there, of which MVP HOSTS is certainly one, but, I
just found this one just now, which I'm going to incorporate:
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

It has 10,250 entries in it, once I cleaned up all the comments.
Here is the cleaned up file before I tested it with mine:
http://pastebin.com/vhNMYa4x

On 08/30/2014 09:31 AM, Ned Turnbull wrote:
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?


I don't think that's a good idea. It's probably just like installing a
program that you downloaded while Tor is still open. It destroys your
anonymity. Tor warns not to do that for that reason.

--
Caver1

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 15:51:35 -0500, John Hasler wrote:

I find that Privoxy plus NoScript blocks 99.9% of all advertising with
no need for any configuration.

Do others concur that Privoxy plus NoScript is the panacea that solves
all but 0.01% of the obnoxious web sites?

If so, that's a winner, at least for one browser and one port.

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 23:03:06 +0200, Peter Köhlmann wrote:

That task is "slowing down each and every network connection"?
Brilliant, you found it

I have noticed absolutely no slowdown, when I run a speedtest.net
with and without a hosts file.

I notice absolutely no slowdown when I access web pages, with
and without the hosts file.

In fact, things *speed* up, because far fewer background
sites are being connected to.

If the 127.0.0.1 syntax is "slowing" you down, the 0.0.0.0
synax on Win8 machines might help, but, this site says the
speed difference is minuscule.
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Since I have a decade of experience with huge HOSTS files,
I wonder where you get your *facts* from, since you've
never even tried it, it seems.

Are you just making that up?

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 21:06:15 +0000, Ned Turnbull wrote:

NOTE: The effort is in culling out duplicates, which I do
simply by removing all extraneous lines, and then removing
extraneous characters in the good lines.

Since the only work in merging hosts file is in culling out
the duplicates, I've done that work for you, for this site:
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Here is the 10,250 line file, cleaned up, from that site:
http://pastebin.com/vhNMYa4x

When I compare that to yesterday's MVP HOSTS file, I see:
13626 domains in HOSTS
10250 domains in someonewhocares
11761 domains in HOSTS that are not in someonewhocares

Based on a quick output from this simple command:
$ comm -2 -3 (sort file1) (sort file2) file3
$ wc -l file*

So, I'll make a *new* combined hosts file for myself.
If anyone wants it, let me know.

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 21:07:38 +0000, Ned Turnbull wrote:

Here's another one I just found by accident:
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

I combined that recently found hosts file with mine,
and, after removing duplicates, I found that my hosts
file grew by 232 hosts (from 23,735 hosts to 23,967 hosts).

So, with about 30 seconds' effort, we are able to add over
two hundred additional hosts that we will never see on
any machine in our networks.

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:25:02 -0400, Caver1 wrote:

I don't think that's a good idea. It's probably just like installing a
program that you downloaded while Tor is still open. It destroys your
anonymity. Tor warns not to do that for that reason.

That's what I was worried about. Thanks.

Since a hosts file is a TEXT file, the pastebin.net method
seems to work, as long as I keep it below the 500 KB limit.

Ned Turnbull wrote:
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 21:06:15 +0000, Ned Turnbull wrote:

NOTE: The effort is in culling out duplicates, which I do
simply by removing all extraneous lines, and then removing
extraneous characters in the good lines.

Since the only work in merging hosts file is in culling out
the duplicates, I've done that work for you, for this site:
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Here is the 10,250 line file, cleaned up, from that site:
http://pastebin.com/vhNMYa4x

When I compare that to yesterday's MVP HOSTS file, I see:
13626 domains in HOSTS
10250 domains in someonewhocares
11761 domains in HOSTS that are not in someonewhocares

Based on a quick output from this simple command:
$ comm -2 -3 (sort file1) (sort file2) file3
$ wc -l file*

So, I'll make a *new* combined hosts file for myself.
If anyone wants it, let me know.

Ned

You haven't mentioned the Hosts file incorporated in the Malwarebytes
anti-malware software. Have you actually reviewed it?

You can find same he http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download

HTH

Dave

--
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then
you win.

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 21:27:17 +0000, Ned Turnbull wrote:

Do others concur that Privoxy plus NoScript is the panacea that solves
all but 0.01% of the obnoxious web sites?

OoOOps. I was off by one decimal place, but the question remains
whether Privoxy & NoScript solve almost all the problems that the
hosts file attempts to solve on the three major PC platforms for
all the browsers one would use, and for all the ports.

~BD~ wrote:
Ned Turnbull wrote:
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 21:06:15 +0000, Ned Turnbull wrote:

NOTE: The effort is in culling out duplicates, which I do
simply by removing all extraneous lines, and then removing
extraneous characters in the good lines.

Since the only work in merging hosts file is in culling out
the duplicates, I've done that work for you, for this site:
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Here is the 10,250 line file, cleaned up, from that site:
http://pastebin.com/vhNMYa4x

When I compare that to yesterday's MVP HOSTS file, I see:
13626 domains in HOSTS
10250 domains in someonewhocares
11761 domains in HOSTS that are not in someonewhocares

Based on a quick output from this simple command:
$ comm -2 -3 (sort file1) (sort file2) file3
$ wc -l file*

So, I'll make a *new* combined hosts file for myself.
If anyone wants it, let me know.

Ned

You haven't mentioned the Hosts file incorporated in the Malwarebytes
anti-malware software. Have you actually reviewed it?

You can find same he http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download

I should mention the the guy preparing this Hosts file also hosts the
web site of Dustin Cook's BugHunter software. Verify he-

http://mysteryfcm.co.uk/?mode=Contact

--
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then
you win.

On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 22:48:07 +0100, ~BD~ wrote:

You haven't mentioned the Hosts file incorporated in the Malwarebytes
anti-malware software. Have you actually reviewed it?

You can find same he http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download

Hi Dave,

I was not aware of that hosts-file.net hosts file!
I was only using these hosts files:
a) Mine
b) Plus MVP HOSTS (http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm)
c) Plus someonewhocares (http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

Thanks for helping out!

I had just added 232 unique lines to my current hosts file based on
what I accidentally found at http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ so,
my current hosts file contained 23,967 unique hosts.

That file from http://hosts-file.net/?s=Download, once cleaned up
and extraneous ASCII text removed, contains a whopping 901,983
unique hosts (after I removed extraneous spaces, tabs, & comments).

Renaming my hosts lines "file1" and this malwarebytes hosts "file2"
and running the sugested commmand gives me a surprising result:
$ comm -2 -3 (sort file1) (sort file2) file3
$ wc -l *
23967 file1 (my hosts file unique lines)
901983 file2 (the malwarebytes hosts file unique lines)
18451 file3
944401 total

So, there are 18,451 hosts in my /etc/hosts file that are *not* one
of the malwarebytes 901,983 hosts.

Likewise, renaming the malwarebytes hosts file as "file1" and my hosts
file as "file2", we find almost ninety thousand hosts listed in the
malwarebytes hosts file which are not (yet) in "my" hosts file.
901983 file1 (the malwarebytes hosts file unique lines)
23967 file2 (my hosts file unique lines)
896467 file3
1822417 total

Whew! That's a huge difference!

To test out a million-line hosts file, now "my" hosts file has all
917,434 unique hosts. With almost a million hosts, we'll see what
happens (if anything) to my Linux network performance.

If you can suggest a procedural test, to run with and without the
hosts file in place, that would be helpful to see what the performance
impact (if any) is.