What is the HOSTS Manager?

The HOSTS Manager helps you edit and update your HOSTS file with website and server names without losing or duplicating your existing entries.

What is the HOSTS file 

The 'HOSTS' file is very useful to block certain websites providing advertising, viruses, malware, dialers, web tracking, illegal content, porno, spammers, counters, etc.

How does the HOSTS files work?

The short answer is that the HOSTS file is like an address book. When you type an address like www.yahoo.com into your browser, the HOSTS file is consulted to see if you have the IP address, or "telephone number," for that site. If you do, then your computer will "call it" and the site will open. If not, your computer will ask your ISP's (internet service provider) computer for the phone number before it can "call" that site. Most of the time, you do not have addresses in your "address book," because you have not put any there. Therefore, most of the time your computer asks for the IP address from your ISP to find sites.

If you put ad server names into your HOSTS file with your own computer's IP address (Localhost: 127.0.0.1), your computer will never be able to contact the ad server. It will try to, but it will be simply calling itself and get sort of a "busy signal". Your computer will then give up calling the ad server and no ads will be loaded, nor will any tracking take place. Your choices for blocking sites are not just limited to blocking ad servers. You may block sites that serve advertisements, sites that serve objectionable content, or any other site that you choose to block. Also would it be possible to redirect a website to another website by using that website's IP address in stead of your computers IP address.

Where can I find the HOSTS file?

It is located here:

Linux                                         /etc

Windows 95/98/ME                        c:\windows\

Windows NT/2000/XP                     c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc

                                                c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc

NOTE: The HOSTS file does NOT have an extention (extensions are the .exe, .txt, .doc, etc. endings to filenames). HOSTS.sam is just an sample file, not the file you need to edit.

If you don't have a HOSTS file yet, then create an empty textfile and rename it to remove the .txt extension.