Which domains should I block in etc/hosts?

15 points·honksillet··9 comments

Are there any domains that I should definitely block in my personal computer's etc/hosts file? I'm thinking of domains that provide no service to ME but are just used to track/target advertising/etc.

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http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Here you have a good list, with explanations for some categories.

Wow. There are a lot of "Facebook trojans" on this list.

...And spend your life managing hosts? If this is only for your browser install uBlock and add whatever filters you're interested in. You can also go one step further and disable JavaScript, only re-enabling it for sites you care about as you go. If this is for other software you might want to reconsider what you install on your computer.

About once a quarter I go to http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm and download a new Hosts file. My internet browsing is so much more peaceful without all the ads.

I probably shouldn't be shocked by how long these lists are.

You should be shocked they're not longer.

Source: engineer that used to dabble in adtech

I use dnsmasq for this. In addition to the speedup from local DNS caching, you can optionally use wildcards to block domains instead of specifying each subdomain.

This will get two popular hosts blocking lists and convert them to dnsmasq.conf format: https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsmasq-blacklist

A similar/complementary product to look at (Windows only) would be Spyware Blaster - https://www.brightfort.com/spywareblaster.html

Maybe a better idea than to manage your hosts file is to use opendns.com and choose the categories you want to block.

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