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There are a lot of good lists of sites to block.

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
http://www.smartin-designs.com/ (discontinued, but links are good)
http://everythingisnt.com/hosts.html
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Or go one better and block everything from hosts you don't like. Check out: this for info on how to do this and a great big list of sites worth blocking. I added an index.html to my localhost web server with a message indicating add content has been blocked, and I can't begin to tell you how often I see it.

That's still pretty daunting for the user that doesn't even know what c:\windows\hosts means or how to get to it. That page really needs something like:

1. Right-click on this and select "Save As"
2. keep pressing the little up arrow until you reach My Computer
3. Double-click on the "(C:)" icon
4. Type in "newhosts" (without the quotes) and click "Save"
5. Right-click on this and select "Save As"
6. etc.

where the second file is a MS-Dos batch file that finds your hosts file and adds the contents of the first file to it. It should check for an existing hosts backup, and if not present, make one. Then it should concatenate the backup to the newhosts file. This way the process can be repeated.

That's still pretty daunting for the user that doesn't even know what c:\windows\hosts means or how to get to it. That page really needs something like:

1. Right-click on this and select "Save As"
2. keep pressing the little up arrow until you reach My Computer
3. Double-click on the "(C:)" icon
4. Type in "newhosts" (without the quotes) and click "Save"
5. Right-click on this and select "Save As"
6. etc.

where the second file is a MS-Dos batch file that finds your hosts file and adds the contents of the first file to it. It should check for an existing hosts backup, and if not present, make one. Then it should concatenate the backup to the newhosts file. This way the process can be repeated.

or, kill 'em ALL off, with the addendum to HOSTS at...

http://www.smartin-designs.com/

( ads, tracker-sleazers, etc, all of 'em, and it speeds-up one's browsing, too. )

Get yourself a mammoth pre-made hosts list right here.

Then get yourself a glorious hosts blocking list and say goodbye to 90% of advertising content and a big speed-up! I am on 28.8 dialup (nothing better is available here, not even 56K) and this is a life-saver.

You may find this list of ad servers more useful than just having a single entry for DoubleClick.

I like this idea. So we can emulate .Mac servers, BNETD servers, advertising servers, Cydoor servers, and even :CueCat servers. Setting up independent servers has the obvious advantage of being independent from an ultimate authority, decentralizing the service and making it more useful to the Internet community. So I ask Slashdot, what commericial or otherwise propertiary server will be reverse-engineered and cloned next? My vote is in for an Oscar/TOC server so one could use AOL-IM to communicate with one's LAN.

Just another reason to list slashdot in your hosts file, along with a 127.0.0.1 for all the adult sites which can easily be found in a nice pre-formatted hosts file right here.

Yeah but there are always web bugs. You'd better get yourself a hosts blocking list.

Personally, I swear by /etc/hosts or /winnt/system32/drivers/etc/hosts, wherever the circumstances apply.

Or let someone do the manual labor for you: Pick up a comprehensive ad-blocking hosts file here. Then just copy the whole shebang into your hosts file (C:\Windows\hosts or (I believe) /etc/hosts). Personally, I commented out all the entries with OSDN in the string, because hey, I like this place.

One of the disadvantages to this method is that you often get popups saying "unable to connect to ad.adservingsite.com". I tried running Apache for a while to get rid of the messages, but decided that was silly.

you could try this or this for some nice huge lists.

that advertisement(flash) errored for me when trying to resolve due to editing hosts file :)

try here-> a huge hosts file to help stop ads from appearing

SmartIn Designs has an excellent list as well, one of the best host-blockers I have come across for this and I did used to maintain my own. DoubleClick, be gone.

Several formats and levels of protections are available, so check it out even for the docs. You'll probably want to trim it down a bit... the largest list is pretty damn large.

Anyone know of any other ones out there? I think using a CVS-like system to maintain a decentralised host blocking list could be a good idea... anyone trying this already?

Smartin Designs.

The lameness filter won't let me paste the list in here and post but the hosts blocking list they have there is a good 400k long. I use it religiously.

Here's a hint for the less informed: In windows9x/me edit the file \windows\hosts to allow you to redirect sites like doubleclick so they won't receive their web bug, cookie and other ad-tracker data. The text to insert can be found at the above site. For win2k/NT it's in \winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.

In linux, the hosts file is in \etc\hosts.

Go have fun ;-)

Another way is to download this hosts file. About a 50K download = 10,080 unique servers blocked, 171 doubleclick servers. Last updated end of November, last year.

You don't need a DNS server to do this. If you're running Windows, all you need is to add a file called "hosts" to c:\windows\. A really cool sample hosts file can be found here. The only downside is that you have to keep clicking through "Connection refused by ad.doubleclick.com" messages. Oh, and they did have Freshmeat blacklisted for a little while, so you'll have to edit it to taste.

More important, redirecting "evilcompany.com" isn't going to solve all your problems. As others have already mentioned, simple Javascript can force WMP to reveal its identifier unless you've disabled it or uninstalled WMP. They call it the "Supercookie."

Okay, I had a stupid idea. If someone could figure out which file in WMP actually contained the ID, then one of us could volunteer to give copies of that file to everyone, to drop into the appropriate folder. Instead of being a unique identifier, it would be an identifier that could only link you to a pool of hundreds or thousands of people.

Of course, the person who offered this file to the masses would end up getting mountains of spam, junk mail, and lawsuits. But his sacrifice to save us all would make him an object of reverence and devotion for generations to come.

Do it, dude. You'd be bigger than Jesus.

While this does not really stop the ads from using dhtml to hork around with your page, having most of the ads DNS name pointed to your own server with a light 404 or (nothing at all) goes a long way to making everything right in the world.

I use to collect my own list, and then I found http://www.smartin-designs.com/ 's site that covers most everything.

Now if I could just figure out how to replace all 1px images with my own transparent gif - damn those web bugs....

I guess the etc/hosts thing is for Linux? Windows users can use a hosts file also, but it goes in the windows folder and the name has to be "hosts" with no extension. (check the link for all the info).

I've NEVER purchased anything on the Internet via a banner ad. I think I've clicked on maybe ten or twelve banner ads over the course of my entire online life, and most of those were back in the mid-90's, when many ads actually lead you to interesting sites without trying to track you, spy on you, or steal your personal information. These days, I rarely see banner ads, and I never see those from the major ad networks. I've fiddled with various blocking tools over the last year or two. My favorite has been The Proxomitron but with my cable modem, the real-time processing of most web pages makes the speed of my browsing unbearably slow. I finally settled on using the Windows hosts file to block most known ad servers, and Edexter to serve up fake images so Netscape doesn't crap out trying to download a nonexistant banner ad on every page I visit. It doesn't catch everything, and it doesn't block the other annoyances that The Proxomitron can be programmed to catch, but it also doesn't affect the speed of my browser.

See http://www.smartin-designs.com/ for a great prewritten hosts file and plenty of advice for using it. If you do use the hosts file to block banners, be sure to use eDexter as well, especially if you use Netscape.

DennyK