The XHaustive Blocker Project

Summary

• Objectives
• How ?
• Let's go !

Objectives

The primary objective of this project is to enable you to block as many internet ads as possible, which will make your surfing experience faster and more comfortable.
If you don't see the interest of blocking internet ads, I suggest that you have a look at this page, you'll see a site before and after blocking its ads.

How ?

First we want to point out that this method should work on any OS (Windows, Linux, Mac...).
When you surf the web, you type internet adresses (URLs), eg www.google.com. But this is not the real address of the server : we could say it's like its name, easy to remember. The real server address is its IP (we could say it's like its phone number), looking like 66.102.9.99, not really easy to memorize... So, when you type an URL, your browser has to ask to an internet root server the IP corresponding to this URL.
The process of asking the IP corresponding to the URL takes a (short) while, so a system has been created to avoid having to ask for the IP : the hosts file. In this file, your computer can store correspondances between URLs and IPs.

Before going further, let's see where to find this hosts file :
→ Windows 95/98/Me : c:\windows folder
→ Windows NT/2000 : c:\winnt\system32\driver\etc folder
→ Windows XP : c:\windows\system32\driver\etc folder
→ Linux/BSD/Solaris/Unix : /etc/ folder
→ BeOS : /boot/beos/etc/ folder
→ Mac : System:Preferences folder or System folder

Now this is becoming very interesting : if your computer finds the URL that you want to load in the hosts file, it will always use the IP mentionned in this file. So, if you record a wrong IP (and we'll put 127.0.0.1, which is the address of your computer), it won't be able to load the site. So, if we list the ad sites in the hosts file, and set their IP to 127.0.0.1, the ads won't be able to load anymore !

Let's go !

To block ads, download one of our hosts file below and use it to edit your own hosts file (please back up your hosts file before editing it).

Latest lists

These files are 7-Zip archives (see our compressed files tutorial) :

• all OS except Mac :
  • Full list except akamai servers : mpam4_XHB_hosts_win_20070217.7z (8 KiB)
  • Akamai servers only : mpam3_XHB_hosts_win_AKAMAI_20050227.7z (11 KiB)
• Mac :
  • Full list except akamai servers : mpam4_XHB_hosts_mac_20070217.7z (8 KiB)
  • Akamai servers only : mpam3_XHB_hosts_mac_AKAMAI_20050227.7z (15 KiB)

Notes

• We are aware of the problems with Yahoo and our former host list. That's why we put apart the old, non-database list, which is here : mpam4_XHB_hosts_left.7z (33 KiB - all OS except Mac).
• There is a problem with lycos.co.uk : if you use this site, remove the line static.lycos-europe.net in the hosts file.