Hosts Blocking Technique

I personally don't like this "Ban the Internet" method. It also makes it to easy for something to get into your hosts file and hide in the middle of a thousand or more other entries. And then when something is behaving strange on your system and the hosts file is suspect, you have to go thru all the lines asking, "Is this good, what about this one, and this one,...etc. But everyone has their preferences. You can wait to see what others think. If you came here for help and your hosts file had anything more than the comment lines and one line saying 127.0.0.1 localhost, you would promptly be met by a request to remove all lines except the 127.0.0.1 line.

 

That's okay to do. It's even an option in SpyBot S&D (part of the reason we recommend using it). Just remember that you did that, if a question ever come up about it.

 

Another suggestion most refuse to adopt. Cookies are almost always harmless. People use these in their hosts files to make them large. Anti-spyware programs add them to make their programs seem effective. It appears the latest Spybot backs off on them some, so maybe were getting somewhere. With so many blatantly evil malware programs out there, I think its a shame to blanket all cookies as evil.