What in the world is a spy-ad?

Well, I was lazy and running out of space in the navigational bar, so I just crammed "spyware" and "advertisements" into one simple word: spy-ads. Maybe it'll become a real word some day...

Anyway, spy-ads are those irritating ads that flash across free web sites at "Anglefire" and "Yahoo!". When you get sick of looking at them, return back to this page, or just continue if you already are.

Spy-ads - "the tricky marketing tool of today". They have attention-grabbing pictures and words like "click here" or some unmentionables. These attract many people (usually the ones that are uninformed) to click on them. Usually some of these ads are hosted by spyware companies/servers. Thus, they make money everytime you SEE them or worse, CLICK on them.

A good example of a spy-ad:

Don't you hate these irritating things!?! Wanna know how to PERMANENTLY remove these pests that distract you from viewing a wonderful web site? Read on!
Note: there is no spyware cookie attached to this spy-ad as it is only an image. No script is used to load this picture.

There is this very useful file that Windows/Mac/linux refer to whenever you type in a web address and click "go". This is the Hosts file. Quoted from Gorilla Design Studio: "The HOSTS file is like an address book. When you type an address like www.yahoo.com into your browser, the HOSTS file is consulted to see if you have the IP address, or "telephone number," for that site. If you do, then your computer will "call it" and the site will open. If not, your computer will ask your ISP's (internet service provider) computer for the phone number before it can "call" that site. Most of the time, you do not have addresses in your "address book," because you have not put any there. Therefore, most of the time your computer asks for the IP address from your ISP to find sites.

If you put ad server names into your HOSTS file with your own computer's IP address (Localhost: 127.0.0.1), your computer will never be able to contact the ad server. It will try to, but it will be simply calling itself and get sort of a "busy signal". Your computer will then give up calling the ad server and no ads will be loaded, nor will any tracking take place. Your choices for blocking sites are not just limited to blocking ad servers. You may block sites that serve advertisements, sites that serve objectionable content, or any other site that you choose to block. Also would it be possible to redirect a website to another website by using that website's IP adress in stead of your computers IP adress."

Here's the finished product:

Back to where we were, this hosts file is very handy, but where will you get your complete list of spy-ad servers?!

RIGHT HERE at SpywareKilla! Hooray!

Go to downloads right now and grab your copy of the "hosts" file. Stop letting spy-ads get in your way of surfing!!!

Note: The hosts file location is stated below. You need to know this as you have to save the file to that place.

Linux: /etc
Windows 95/98/Me: c:\windows\
Windows NT/2000/XP Pro: c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\
Windows XP Home: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\
(you may need administrator access for Windows NT/2000/XP)

Mac:
System Folder --> Preferences
(usually there is no "hosts" file located here, so just save it to that folder)

The HOSTS file does NOT have an extention (extensions are the .exe, .txt, .doc, etc. endings to filenames) If it has an extention, just remove it.

More information on downloads page.