[sdnog] a localised solution for preventing network abuse.

[Nishal Goburdhan]

someone asked me about this, so i thought it would be a nice topic for 
discussion.

for more years than i can remember, i have been editing my /etc/hosts/ 
file, and inserting dummy entries for things that i don’t like.  this, 
to me, is a lot more efficient than an ad-blocker, and also something 
*i* control (there is some controversy about ad-blockers and their 
neutrality, but i’d rather not talk about that)
i’ve used the details from http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ as a 
source of things that i’d simply rather not see;  so my /etc/hosts/ 
file has lots of entries from here pointing to 127.0.0.53.  of course 
this comes with risk, but i’m prepared to deal with that, and to debug 
as needed.

in the past 5years or so, i think i’ve had one issue - i was trying to 
buy a windows license key for evaluating windows 10, from 
microsoft.co.za, and they were onward linking to an ad network that was 
in the list above;  so i simply took that as a sign that i should not 
buy windows  ;-)

i was asked if i thought this was a good idea.  the answer - as with 
most things on the internet is - it depends.
i do this on my laptop and at my home dns server, because the my client 
base is pretty predictably.   also at my sister’s house.  at even at a 
small business that i helped get their network stuff up and running.  
would i do this on a service provider network?  probably, but i’d have 
a prepared statement of why/how/how to debug for my noc in advance.


—n.