The hosts file is is essentially a list of sites that you wish to block when surfing the internet. Windows looks at the hosts file when you make a request for a website to see if you have listed / blocked it and then tells you the request has failed. You may wish to block sites so they don’t serve you adverts or because they harbour malware or other nastiness. Hostsman is a freeware program that manages the hosts file for you. It would be very difficult to maintain your own host file as there are thousands of sites that serve ads and malware. Luckily there are a number of people who generously do maintain lists of websites to block such as these:
http://hostsfile.mine.nu/downloads/
http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?showintro=0;hostformat=hosts
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm#Note
http://www.hosts-file.net/?s=Download
Hostsman will update your hosts file for you using some of the above downloadable hosts files and merge them together removing any duplicates. Hostsman can also disable the windows dns client which the program recommends you do. As a hosts file of over 135kb can cause the dns client to slow your computer down disabling is recommended although there seems to be pro’s and cons to doing so. This freeware app can also backup, find errors in and find hijacks in your hosts. Another neat trick is that the program can act as a server and instead of showing nothing or a “this page cannot be displayed page” instead of an blocked page it can show you a picture or a page you request.
The three icons allow you to disable / enable the hosts file, update it from your update sources (which come preloaded) and open the hosts file for editing.
An alternate to Hostsman is Spybot Search and Destroy the popular Anti-Malware application you may have already installed. This program can add a list of current malware serving sites in it’s tools –> hosts menu option.
Some people argue that using a hosts file is unnecessary or won’t work as the file can’t have every bad site on it. I personally think that using one is part of a layered approach to security and will help.
Hostsman works on Windows 98SE, Me, 2000, XP, Server 2003 and Vista
Popularity: 2% [?]
Related posts:
Immunization with Spybot Search and Destroy | JonnysBlog
8 months ago
[...] Adding the addresses of websites to your hosts file (that point to 127.0.0.1) will block them. This is done to block websites that hold malware on them. Advert blocking lists are also available and this is something I have covered on my Hostsman Post. [...]