Filtering ads while browsing

When you are online, if you are browsing the web or if you are playing online games, you are bombarded with unsollicited advertisements of all kinds and origins. Some of the largest polluters of internet traffic are Google, DoubleClick and Microsoft, who serve many dynamic advertisements into websites or video games AND slowing your traffic down by using upir bandwidth. The most effective way to filter these served ads is by redirecting their requests. This is done by adding a line to your local HOSTS file that misleads the request. On Windows XP you will find this file in c:/windows/system32/drivers/etc, on Mac OS X 10.4 you will find this file in /private/etc. Open this file in a text editor, for example JEdit or Notepad and at the following lines to it.

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net
127.0.0.1 pagead.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 adservices.google.com

More information you may also find on Wikipedia/Hosts_file. Or download the MVPS HOSTS file.

updated,20060413:
NYTimes.com filtered:
NYTimes.com filtered of ads

Hotmail.com filtered:
Hotmail filtered of ads

One thought on “Filtering ads while browsing

  1. Patrick

    Aahh very cool – thanks for the tip. I would add a before/after website that someone can use to see the ads stopped

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Patrick Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *