uber leet hosts file is back

by | Aug 20, 2019 | Technology

I have begun updating a personally curated, collected, merged, de-duped hosts file here: https://www.iruberleet.org/hosts-file/

The regular version blocks ads, trackers, malware, spyware, gambling, fake news, fraud, cryptomining and a bunch of other bad things. It has around 40000 blocked hosts and is about 1mb in size.

The BIG version is about 22mb in size with over 700000 hosts blocked, it includes many more sources and also blocks pornography and social networking.

I personally use the regular version on all of my devices, computers and routers.

For more general information on hosts files, check out the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file)

Google announces increase of ad-placements on Android Home screens, search and YouTube

by | May 23, 2019 | Rant, Technology

Google has announced this month that they will be increasing the placement of advertisements on Android Home screens and YouTube’s recommended videos.

These new ads will be in the form of (static) image galleries which you can scroll through. These kinds of ads will likely be harder to block out, particularly in YouTube’s recommended video list.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/14/18623541/google-gallery-discovery-mobile-ads-announced

Google Commences Advertising On Your Home Speakers And Phone

by | Mar 17, 2017 | Rant

Advertising giant google has now begun a new model: Shouting out random advertisements across the speakers in your house! The Google Home service will now commence shouting out completely random and unrelated advertisements based entirely upon the whims of those who pay google for access to your speakers. Google has begun shouting out advertisements for the 2017 live action film Beauty and the Beast whenever people request their own personal information.

Google has denied that these are advertisements and instead say: “This isn’t an ad; … it invites our partners to be our guest and share their tales”. This is also taking place on people’s android smart phones when users request their own personal information. None of these users have requested information regarding beauty and the beast or any films, they requested an account of their day and google has deemed this trigger action to advertise about completely unrelated products. My sincere apologies, they are not advertising… they are sharing a story with you from their parters…

SOURCE: https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/16/google-home-is-playing-ads-for-beauty-and-the-beast/