Re: Fwd: Windows 'phone home' behavior, hosts file

[flash flash@xxxxxxxx]

Jordan,

Thanks for the link. I recommend it.

I'm a great believer in hosts files. All my machines use them, with
slight variations. The text I sent you was only an excerpt from the
hosts files I actually use. I block quite a number of other sites
(adverts as well as other software which would otherwise auto-update
itself) and resolve quite a number of sites I frequent.

For the benefit of those who may not know about this sort of thing, a
hosts file resolves names to IP addresses. The names can be URLs in
the Internet or local computer names in your LAN. The hosts file can
be used either to block connections to unwanted servers (such ad
servers, google.analytics, pop-up banners, MS auto-updaters, the NSA,
etc.) or to avoid having to use DNS or other name resolution protocols
(such as NetBIOS or Active Directory) to resolve names of places you
DO want to go to.

For blocking a connection to a known server, we'll take this as an
example: sls.update.microsoft.com

you map it to some IP address which goes nowhere, for example:
127.0.0.1 or 0.0.0.0 -- both of which the machine interprets to be the
machine itself (meaning, the message dies in committee and never
leaves the netword card).

For obviating Active Directory/NetBIOS protocols, you map a local
computer's name, for example "flash01" to it's local IP address
(192.168.1.1 or whatever)--this saves a bit of traffic on the LAN.

For obviating DNS lookups to known safe servers, for example your
email exchange server, you map the exchange server's name, for example
"gmail.com" to its Internet IP address (whatever that is; you can find
out by typing ipconfig /displaydns in a DOS window). Resolving URLs to
fixed IP addresses in the hosts file saves a bit of traffic on the WAN
and a bit time as well, since DNS lookups can be slow at peak traffic
times in the Internet.

Note: resolving names to fixed IP addresses presupposes that the IP
addresses ARE fixed. If local computers are receiving different IP
addresses every day from a DHCP server, then either use static
mappings on the DHCP server or don't use the hosts file for those
stations.

There is an important note regarding the use of hosts files with Win
8; see this link:

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hostswin8.htm

In Win 8, the Win Defender prevents you from using a modified hosts
file, so you have to manually configure Win Defender to accept the
modified hosts file (or, as I do, deactivate the Defender and use
other security tools).

Mac OS X also uses a hosts file; same principle, same syntax, same
file name, just a different path.