Posted on 09/15/2009 12:50:56 PM PDT by jongaltsr
I spend much of my time trying to read news articles and visit various web sites that have these new (expanding) advertisements.
Some have click out boxes others do not. I spend a lot of time trying various techniques to get rid of those ads so that I can read the articles I am researching.
Is there some technique to make them disappear?
Better yet - Is there someone who one can complain to to get rid of that style of ad? Many are subscription only and I see no reason to subscribe just to complain that I can't read the information due to those ads.
I am also using a HOSTS file product but I want to take a look at the one you have.
The HOSTS file is the way to go and it really isn’t that hard to modify as it is a text file. At work we use AIX (IBM’s UNIX variant) and we edit the HOSTS file all the time. I manually edit mine on my PC to include a lot of my commonly visited sites so I can get to them quicker. Granted, if a site changes their IP address, I have to go in and change it in my local PC’s HOSTS file.
Simply put, the HOSTS file will “resolve” the web address you enter (e.g. www.freerepublic.com) to the numeric IP address (209.157.64.201) in order to get where you want to go. The first place your browser will go to resolve that address is your own HOSTS file on your system. If it cannot find a match (www.freerepublic.com) then it will go out to the web to a domain name server to resolve it for you.
Generally what these HOSTS products do for you is populate your local systems HOSTS file with a whole bunch of advertisers web addresses and resolves them to “home” which is your local machine (127.0.0.1) so what displays in place of the advertisement is “page cannot be displayed” or the pop ups never happen. What this does for you is dramatically speeds up your surfing experience because your browser doesn’t have to go out to all these advertisers systems to pull their ads.
Hope that makes sense.
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