mschutte369

Here is the site that explains the HOSTS file a little better and where I first learned about it. I have all of their entries, and then some. From which I gathered from other sites. [url="http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm"]http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm[/url]

Yes, whoever compiled this HOSTS file is blocking thousands of spyware programs from accessing the internet. I should find the webpage again and post so that you can read up on it.

Oh, oh, oh, let me add this. Those of you still on a 56k modem, this would help you out quite a bit. The spyware being blocked will no longer take up the bandwidth for your internet access, thus leaving only your requests to load more quickly.

I have a HOSTS file that currently blocks around 77,000 sites from accessing the internet. For those that are not that tech smart. A HOSTS file is a file on every computer. Its used to get the numerical address for whatever site your computer is trying to access. I'm sure that there are lots of people on this site that is unaware of this file and probably don't have any entries in it. But here's how it works. Let's say you want to visit www.yahoo.com. When you are connected to the internet, you computer goes to your ISP to determine the numerical address to go to. Thus adding time to the webpage load. You can increase speed by entering into your HOSTS file the IP (numerical) address of the site followed by "www.yahoo.com" (or whatever site). Your computer no longer needs to communicate with the ISP provider to get the IP address, eliminating this step. So, what people on the net have suggested is to trick your computer to return spyware sites requests directly back to your computer. Every computer has a localhost entry with an IP address of 127.0.0.1. This is your internet IP address. So lets say that you want to block access to www.yahoo.com. In the HOSTS file you would put an entry like this in it... 127.0.0.1 www.yahoo.com This tells the browser to return directly back to your computer rather than loading the yahoo homepage. Which should give you a page cannot load message. Effectively blocking access to the internet by whatever's program to access the internet. Please PM me if you like to get this file (it's free). NOTE: this file also blocks tons of porn sites. I have these entries in mine, so my kids cannot access them. I also have a program that allows to add more sites to the HOSTS file. Because unfortunately, I'm not able to get all porn sites and new spyware comes out everyday. But I must admit that my firewall log has decreased dramatically since putting these entries in my HOSTS file. If you need more information, let me know, I'll try to answer them.