I wrote a little tool today, born out of my own frustrations with the internet. It is for Windows XP SP1 and SP2 only.
There's two ways to approach this, the simple way and the complex way - pick the post you want to read based on your computer knowledge then skip to the last bit.
The Complex Way
A hosts file is a list of URL's stored on your computer with corresponding IP addresses. When you enter a URL, such as http://www.lfsforum.net your browser asks your "Domain Name Server" (which is provided by your ISP) for the IP address of that server. An IP address is a series of techy geeky numbers which route your internet based data and get the right information, basically, it's like the door number on your house.
A hosts file changes this procedure a little bit by first getting your browser to check a list of web URL's stored on your own machine, specifically, stored in the hosts file. (Note for Mac users: "UNLUCKY!"*).
We can use this to take some control back from the freaks on the internet who use it to bombard us with pop up adverts, spyware, viruses and malware.
Most malliscious and unwanted software, pop ups and web pages work by URL and not IP because of a beautiful thing called name servers and shared hosting - but that's all far too in depth even for the complex explanation - so basically unless a nasty hacker type advert person buys their own server on their own IP (and gets it black listed pretty quickly) they are forced to use a URL to host their nasty works.
We can use the hosts file to blacklist those URL's by redirecting all requests to a special IP address called localhost, or 127.0.0.1. This special address loops back to your own machine, so ...
When I send a request to www.nastypopupadvertserver.com/advert1.html my browser first looks at my hosts file, if it sees the URL in it's database then it sends the request to: 127.0.0.1/advert1.html
Or in other words, it asks my own machine for the file advert1.html, which I dont have, so it doesnt do anything.
eh voila, problem solved... Except there's a problem.
Where are all these nasty websites? Well that's where the hosts file project comes in. There's thousands of people out there all competing to be the one who first reports a new URL as a nasty advert server, and a team of moderators who hand check each URL submitted. The results are then published on a website.
Problem solved right? Well no, because remember to go get it is a nightmare, and you have to fiddle around to find where to save the file and flaff about with filename extensions and all in all it's just a plain pig that I maybe get around to doing once every 6 months or so, and that just isn't enough.
So I wrote a program to do it for me.
Simple Explanation
This will help protect your computer from pop ups, malware, viruses and other annoying internet related junk. It is not memory resident and will not effect the performance of your PC.
The Last Bit
As I mentioned before this is only for Windows XP, other versions of Windows can use a hosts file but the path to save the file is different and my program doesnt support that.
There is however a little glitch with using a hosts file in Windows XP (and also 2000 for that matter) it stems out of Microsoft's insistence that caching of domain names is more important than the general funcitonality of your computer - and when you have several thousand domain names stored locally it can all get out of hand.
To counter this, if you wish to use this tool, turn off DNS caching. It's a non-essential service that will not effect performance in a negative way because Microsoft wrote it so badly, in my experience it actually degrates performance - it reduces DNS lookup times to sites you've already visited today and replaces it with net drop outs in the background - theoretically in downtime - but not so great for games players.
To disable DNS Caching: Right click my computer and click Manage.
Expand Services and Applications
Click Services
Right click DNS Client and goto Properties
Stop the service and change startup type to Disabled.
Now all you need is my little program to download your hosts file, the current database is about 1,5mb in size so it's probably unfair on the person who pays the bandwidth bill to stick it in your startup.
Instead stick the program on your desktop, quicklaunch, start menu, or where-ever else is convenient. It's a self contained .exe file with no other supporting files and is only half meg in size and then run it once a week.
It aint pretty, but it does the job.
http://www.simtouringcarcup.com/hostFileGrabber.zip
*Re: Mac users - Technically it's possible, but a balls up at Apple in the priority assignment of DNS lookups makes it a pig - you're going to need to delve into the Unix shell to use a hosts file, so I say again, "UNLUCKY!".
There's two ways to approach this, the simple way and the complex way - pick the post you want to read based on your computer knowledge then skip to the last bit.
The Complex Way
A hosts file is a list of URL's stored on your computer with corresponding IP addresses. When you enter a URL, such as http://www.lfsforum.net your browser asks your "Domain Name Server" (which is provided by your ISP) for the IP address of that server. An IP address is a series of techy geeky numbers which route your internet based data and get the right information, basically, it's like the door number on your house.
A hosts file changes this procedure a little bit by first getting your browser to check a list of web URL's stored on your own machine, specifically, stored in the hosts file. (Note for Mac users: "UNLUCKY!"*).
We can use this to take some control back from the freaks on the internet who use it to bombard us with pop up adverts, spyware, viruses and malware.
Most malliscious and unwanted software, pop ups and web pages work by URL and not IP because of a beautiful thing called name servers and shared hosting - but that's all far too in depth even for the complex explanation - so basically unless a nasty hacker type advert person buys their own server on their own IP (and gets it black listed pretty quickly) they are forced to use a URL to host their nasty works.
We can use the hosts file to blacklist those URL's by redirecting all requests to a special IP address called localhost, or 127.0.0.1. This special address loops back to your own machine, so ...
When I send a request to www.nastypopupadvertserver.com/advert1.html my browser first looks at my hosts file, if it sees the URL in it's database then it sends the request to: 127.0.0.1/advert1.html
Or in other words, it asks my own machine for the file advert1.html, which I dont have, so it doesnt do anything.
eh voila, problem solved... Except there's a problem.
Where are all these nasty websites? Well that's where the hosts file project comes in. There's thousands of people out there all competing to be the one who first reports a new URL as a nasty advert server, and a team of moderators who hand check each URL submitted. The results are then published on a website.
Problem solved right? Well no, because remember to go get it is a nightmare, and you have to fiddle around to find where to save the file and flaff about with filename extensions and all in all it's just a plain pig that I maybe get around to doing once every 6 months or so, and that just isn't enough.
So I wrote a program to do it for me.
Simple Explanation
This will help protect your computer from pop ups, malware, viruses and other annoying internet related junk. It is not memory resident and will not effect the performance of your PC.
The Last Bit
As I mentioned before this is only for Windows XP, other versions of Windows can use a hosts file but the path to save the file is different and my program doesnt support that.
There is however a little glitch with using a hosts file in Windows XP (and also 2000 for that matter) it stems out of Microsoft's insistence that caching of domain names is more important than the general funcitonality of your computer - and when you have several thousand domain names stored locally it can all get out of hand.
To counter this, if you wish to use this tool, turn off DNS caching. It's a non-essential service that will not effect performance in a negative way because Microsoft wrote it so badly, in my experience it actually degrates performance - it reduces DNS lookup times to sites you've already visited today and replaces it with net drop outs in the background - theoretically in downtime - but not so great for games players.
To disable DNS Caching: Right click my computer and click Manage.
Expand Services and Applications
Click Services
Right click DNS Client and goto Properties
Stop the service and change startup type to Disabled.
Now all you need is my little program to download your hosts file, the current database is about 1,5mb in size so it's probably unfair on the person who pays the bandwidth bill to stick it in your startup.
Instead stick the program on your desktop, quicklaunch, start menu, or where-ever else is convenient. It's a self contained .exe file with no other supporting files and is only half meg in size and then run it once a week.
It aint pretty, but it does the job.
http://www.simtouringcarcup.com/hostFileGrabber.zip
*Re: Mac users - Technically it's possible, but a balls up at Apple in the priority assignment of DNS lookups makes it a pig - you're going to need to delve into the Unix shell to use a hosts file, so I say again, "UNLUCKY!".
