Re: [NTLK] [OT] Re: "My Browser's Better'n Your Browser"

OK...so you want to know hot to get rid of virtually *ALL* web advertising on your browser?
I've been using this technique for 5+ years and it works wonders.
No more banners
No more pop-ups
No more annoying flash ads...just glorious blank space on the page where the advert was supposed to go...it's wonderful you know...no more tracking gifs, no more cookies dropped by third party ad perveyers...
Wanna know how I do it?
here it is.
Go here:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/
and download the hosts file there
As long as you're using an OS that uses a hosts file to resolve hosts, you can use this technique.

Why/How does this work?
Well, in order for your computer to see another computer, it needs to know the IP of that computer. It gets that IP from one of several sources...a DNS server, a caching server (or proxy) and a hosts file...The computer looking for the IP looks at the hosts file first, and if it finds an entry to the host it's looking for, it will look no further and process the request based on the IP in the hosts file.

What the person in the above site has done, is he's compiled a list of thousands of "bad" URLs and put them in the hosts file and pointed them to 127.0.0.1...which is a valid IP, but valid only on your own personal machine...this is usually called the local IP or LocalHost IP (you can PING 127.0.0.2 or LOCALHOST and they should both resolve to each other)

Sure, my hosts file of over 600k in size, but as a bonus, I don't see any advertising. And the great part is that if there is actually a site you wish to go to (such as the X10 sites) you can edit the hosts file and comment out the lines for X10...the author of this list has compiled it in such a way that the URLs are grouped for easy finding.

Then, I go into my router that has a firewall in it. Most modern routers have firewalls in them...and I edit the restricted URLs to reject any URL with the word ad, or ads or doubleclick or others like that...a perusal of the logs will tell you what the major ad culprits are and just add those to your rejected URLs. Be careful though...most routers with firewalls only allow 10 entries...and if you block a legitimate URL, it may not be obvious right away.

These two techniques are easy to implement and fool proof! use them, you'll wonder how you ever browsed without them!
Ed
web/gadget guru

------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Richard Feynman, Physicist, Nobel winner (1918-1988)

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers."

--- On Fri, 9/18/09, Bob Carls Dudney <kosmicdollop@saber.net> wrote:

From: Bob Carls Dudney <kosmicdollop@saber.net>
Subject: [NTLK] [OT] Re: "My Browser's Better'n Your Browser"
To: newtontalk@newtontalk.net
Cc: "Alexander Clauss" <support@icab.de>
Date: Friday, September 18, 2009, 10:51 AM
<snip>

     block virtually all ads, esp. 3rd-party (my CPU also loves)
     12 JScript options
     security & privacy options
     custom style sheets*

<snip>

E.g: one of my favorite sites is chock full o' Flash ads: custom
filter blocks 'em all, saving my CPU (and saving disk from endless
swapfiles*).

                      *BTW, turning OS X swapping off is great

-- Oh, how I hate Adobe Flash [to tune of "Oh, how I hate to get up
in the mornin' "] --

<snip>

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Received on Fri Sep 18 17:17:53 2009