hpHosts - a HOSTS file to keep out bad websites
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reviewed by StevenBurn, Jan 2006
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Advice from Steven Burn at Ur I. T. Mate
One of the most over-looked ways of protecting your computer is by controlling where it can go on the internet. One of the easiest ways of doing this is by using a filter. You already have a filter on your Windows PC, and it's called the HOSTS file.
Whilst not trying to be too technical, the HOSTS file works by acting as an intermediate between your computer and the outside world. So for example, if Joe's administrator added the following entry into the HOSTS file,
127.0.0.1 snapfiles.com
NOTHING on Joe's computer could access snapfiles.com, be it a browser, an instant messaging program or a malicious application.
How do you know what websites to add to the HOSTS file? You can download a ready made HOSTS file from several places. hpHosts is one of them.
hpHosts is a community managed and maintained HOSTS file for Windows that allows protection against access to spammer, scammer, pornographic, spoofed and malicious websites.
What does "community managed" mean?, this means YOU have a part to play in what websites are added to, or removed from, the hosts file - effectively allowing you to play a part in protecting others from accessing content that could potentially damage their computers.
Once installed on your computer, Windows performs a query against the websites within it, prior to allowing your computer access to the site/server in question. If found, requests are re-directed to your computers internal IP (Internet Protocol) address.
For detailed information on how hosts file's work, please see the following article.
A HOSTed computer is a happy computer!
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Extract the contents of hosts.zip to a folder on your hard disk. Locate the file named HOSTS.TXT which you just extracted and rename it to HOSTS with no .TXT extension. Copy the renamed HOSTS file to one of the following locations depending on your version of Windows.
Windows XP
C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc
Windows NT/2000
C:\Winnt\System32\Drivers\Etc
Windows 95/98/Me
C:\Windows
