A silent ad killer
Using my daughter’s PC recently I was stumped by the lack of ads visible in either Firefox or IE. I checked and rechecked my settings to no avail. A quick search brought me to this little number. Try this at home:
Start>Run>C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Every ad server, ad network, and even dozens of websites appear on this list on my PC. And every ad is blocked.
NYTimes.com – before fixing hosts file.
NYTimes.com – after fixing hosts file.
This appears to be a Windows-based equal opportunity ad destroyer. It kills everything in sight on both browsers and on every site on which ads are delivered by DART, Atlas, OAS, Zedo, etc. I’m wondering if this is malware planted during my kids’ excursions on MP3 download sites. It’s a nasty bit of business for our industry.
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