This file will affect your business!
 

When I had been hit by that terrible trojan/virus attack I went through hundreds of resources re. viruses, and many boards and pages recommended to people to install a new HOSTS file on their computer with a link to a particular HOSTS.ZIP...

In case you don't know: the HOSTS file usually sits in your C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC directory and manages the DNS lookup for your webbrowsers; some malware tends to alter this file to re-direct browser requests to other sites (like when all google requests are re-directed to other suspicious search engines).

Now this particular HOSTS file [link to 170k+ page on my server] does the opposite: it blocks access to a multitude of sites, incl. almost all free counters, adservers, and many adult related payment systems (like refer.ccbill.com, etc.)! Just search the file for one word like affiliates and you'll be surprised...

As I said before: almost every board I came across recommends its installation = good-bye adult surfers!

lets hope not many get this and I hope its not incorperated into any updates that surfers dont know they are getting..

and this biz is really starting to get to me, allways something fucking things up.. |pissed|

Its already very common... but try it, anyone that wants to surf adult content will soon revert back to their original hosts file as blocking all those words makes the adult web un-useable.

It's the stuff like nortons that block the "ad" content by default, and try and make it look seamless to the surfer, that are the real worry for business.

Using the hosts file to block a few annoying hosts works okay, but surfers will see a real slowdown once the file grows too large. For the hosts file to work the resolver has to consult the hosts file before checking with a DNS server. If you have to wait for the the system to look at each line of a 170KB flat file every time a host name is resolved to an IP address your surfing will seem a lot more sluggish than without the big hosts file.

Remember too: Adaware and any other spybot programs will treat a hosts file like that as a potential problem, and flag it every time. Some will automatically delete it.

That file isn't a solution, it is one group's demented way to attempt to block out everything bad on the net. They really should just shut down their PCs and move on to reading books.

It should go to show though: Some people will lump all of out industry together and try to block us en mass for the stupid and illegal acts of certain companies.

It sucks.

Alex

Can you provide some links to the boards that are recommending this install? I would like to see it in the context they are presenting it.

Alex

Re. link to boards: I didn't bookmark any, and only copied pages which were interesting. My 'history' has been emptied since - simply do a search for 'hosts.zip' on Google - gets you 1720 results!

Rawalex, what your mentioned in my other thread is only partly true: the IP address sending people into never-never-land returns only in IE a simple "page not found" error, whereas FireFox/Modzilla (see: I am using it! LOL) gives an error "connection to server blocked" (or similar) which you have to confirm.