Using a Hosts File To Make The Internet Not Suck As Much

Re:Using a Hosts File To Make The Internet Not Suck As Much by Osiris on Friday February 22, 2013 @11:04AM (#5264891)

I have a script setup in my router (TomatoUSB) that downloads a known hosts list and maps all the domains to 0.0.0.0 to block ads and other bad content for all the devices on my network.

Generally, I enjoy not seeing all the ads, but some sites (Slickdeals, I'm looking at you) make such extensive use of affiliate and ads sites that it makes the site barely useable. For slickdeals I ended up making a Chrome extensions that finds URL encoded URLs within a query parameter and redirects to that site directly instead of the affiliate link.

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Re:Using a Hosts File To Make The Internet Not Suck As Much by marios on Friday February 22, 2013 @11:18AM (#5264998)

I like this approach, although I don't have a router that I can flash with TomatoUSB. Instead I setup adsuck[1] which is a DNS blacklisting daemon. It can be setup on individual machines, or on the perimeter like in your case. I prefer the DNS approach as hosts files can grow to be quite lengthy (article proves it) and can in certain cases cause performance issues, as parsing several KBs of entries prior to sending a DNS request is noticeable.

[1] https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck

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