

Which domains should I block in etc/hosts? - honksillet

Are there any domains that I should definitely block in my personal computer&#x27;s etc&#x2F;hosts file?  I&#x27;m thinking of domains that provide no service to ME but are just used to track&#x2F;target advertising&#x2F;etc.
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gmuslera
[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/)

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

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

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bramgg
...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.

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

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

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bitshepherd
You should be shocked they're not longer.

Source: engineer that used to dabble in adtech

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jakeogh
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](https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsmasq-blacklist)

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

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

