DIzzIE
3rd April 2007, 23:30
In the spirit of this subforum’s description, which is (last time I checked, a few minutes ago) “Practical forum for community advice, activist tips, and information on how to improve your life outside of capitalism. Share your experiences of doing it yourself,” here is an easy way to remove Google ads from websites you visit. There are many more ways, which I’ll post about in a little while, and naturally feel free to share your own workarounds as well :).
This method doesn’t require the installation of any additional software or plugins or any of that whacked out jazz.
(Though these instructions are for Windows users, the same principle should work for other OSes...see the bottom of this tut for more info)
Here we go:
1. Click on Start-->Search-->For Files or Folders…-->All files and folders.
2. Type in ‘hosts’ (sans quotes) in the ‘All or part of the filename’ box, and under ‘Look in:’ select the drive where you have Windows installed (typically the C drive). Hit search.
3. You should see a few results pop up in the search window. One file will say simply ‘hosts’ and be typically located in either C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc or C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc.
4. Double click on the hosts file, and a ‘Open With’ window should come up. You want to open this file with Notepad, so select Notepad and hit OK.
5. You should now have the hosts file open in Notepad. You’ll probably see a description of the file (with each line preceded by a # sign to denote a comment field). You can either delete all the crap, or simply go to the bottom of the file.
6. We now come to the critical step. On the blank line in the hosts file, type in:
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
If you want you can add a comment after the line to let you know what this line is, for instance
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com # Google ad blocker
7. Save the hosts file.
8. Close and then open your browser.
9. Browse to a site on which you formally saw the Google ads.
10. Smile :)
As mentioned, I’ll post a few other techniques in a bit, but this one seems to work just fine ;). Mac/*nix people, please share your methods as well, as I’m totally unfamiliar with those OSes (though friends tell me that *nix users have a hosts file as well, in which case the same trick should work for y’all as well; for instance see this (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20001123153451239) site for editing hosts on Macs).
Enjoy! :ph34r:
This method doesn’t require the installation of any additional software or plugins or any of that whacked out jazz.
(Though these instructions are for Windows users, the same principle should work for other OSes...see the bottom of this tut for more info)
Here we go:
1. Click on Start-->Search-->For Files or Folders…-->All files and folders.
2. Type in ‘hosts’ (sans quotes) in the ‘All or part of the filename’ box, and under ‘Look in:’ select the drive where you have Windows installed (typically the C drive). Hit search.
3. You should see a few results pop up in the search window. One file will say simply ‘hosts’ and be typically located in either C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc or C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc.
4. Double click on the hosts file, and a ‘Open With’ window should come up. You want to open this file with Notepad, so select Notepad and hit OK.
5. You should now have the hosts file open in Notepad. You’ll probably see a description of the file (with each line preceded by a # sign to denote a comment field). You can either delete all the crap, or simply go to the bottom of the file.
6. We now come to the critical step. On the blank line in the hosts file, type in:
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
If you want you can add a comment after the line to let you know what this line is, for instance
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com # Google ad blocker
7. Save the hosts file.
8. Close and then open your browser.
9. Browse to a site on which you formally saw the Google ads.
10. Smile :)
As mentioned, I’ll post a few other techniques in a bit, but this one seems to work just fine ;). Mac/*nix people, please share your methods as well, as I’m totally unfamiliar with those OSes (though friends tell me that *nix users have a hosts file as well, in which case the same trick should work for y’all as well; for instance see this (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20001123153451239) site for editing hosts on Macs).
Enjoy! :ph34r: