Tuesday, 10 April 2012

Facebook buys Instagram - I edit my "hosts" file and so can you

Aw fuck, Facebook just got even bigger, and they are in my opinion unworthy of my trust. But there is a way to untangle yourself from their web.

When you type "shacklemore.blogspot.com" into your web browser, your PC does something called a DNS lookup (a bit like you using the phone book to turn a person's name into a phone number). The first place it checks is the local "hosts" file; if there is no entry there, it goes off to look at a DNS server on the internet instead.

If you put a dummy entry into the "hosts" file, you can stop a website from working on that PC. Somewhere on your PC there is that file called "hosts". I use Windows 7, and "hosts" is in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

Simply edit the "hosts" file, and insert lines like these (the 127.0.0.1 is a special IP address used on your PC that will never return the content, but will send back an error message very quickly to your web browser to end it's suspense):
127.0.0.1 www.dailymail.co.uk 
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 zynga.com
127.0.0.1 zbar.zynga.com
127.0.0.1 intragr.am
127.0.0.1 farmville.com
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.net
127.0.0.1 fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 www.fbcdn.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.static.ak.connect.facebook.com
After adding these lines, you will need to reboot.

In this way, you can make sure that you never accidentally visit that web page ever again, or get tracked by them as you browse the web (see those Facebook "Like" buttons on every website? They can be used to track you as you move around the web...)

This technique can also be used to stop your better half from reading your blog; if you can get access to her PC long enough to edit her "hosts" file. I don't need to do it myself, but I'm looking at you TSB...

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