The Easiest Way To Block Ads

I saw this one on Slashdot today. Mike Skallas is making available a hosts file which will help block ads from over 1,000 known ad servers. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated. Just one text file.

Host files hearken back to the early days of the Internet, really early as in day 2, day 3, and so on. In those primordial days it was possible to store IP addresses for every available server in a single file. These days we rely on DNS to translate human-friendly website and domain names into computer friendly. Still, computers still have Host files-- Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever. It's like your own private DNS system.

Using Mike's hosts file, whenever you browse to a webpage that has ads from places like Doubleclick your computer will get the wrong idea about which server it should request the ad images from. Likewise for cookies that could otherwise be tracking (albeit anonymously) your surfing habits. Instead, the ads and cookies will be skipped and you'll be left with what you presumably were after in the first place: the information and content without all the distractions.