About Windows Hosts File

There’s a Hosts file on every operating system. Yes, Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Unix, all of them has it. For Windows XP, the hosts file is located at WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc and it’s called HOSTS without any extension. You can open the HOSTS file with notepad and you should see something like this.
Windows HOSTS file
The hosts file is a computer file used to store information on where to find a node on a computer network. This file maps hostnames to IP addresses. The hosts file is used as a supplement to (or instead of) the domain name system on networks of varying sizes. This file is (unlike DNS) under the control of the user who is using the computer.

Your HOSTS file may now be empty and useless. I’ll show you how you can put it to work and protect your computer from danger.

You can use HostsMan, the free hosts file manager and editor to manage your HOSTS file.
Repair HOSTS file
It has the ability to enable or disable your HOSTS file, edit your HOSTS file and update your host from 4 websites that maintain it. By updating your hosts file, you’re able to filter out advertisements. This can save network bandwidth, as well, by eliminating a request to the DNS server normally used for obtaining address information, as well as by not downloading the advertisements.

Before doing anything to your HOSTS file using HostsMan, it is advisable to make a backup first in case you want to restore your original HOSTS file. To make your backup, press CTRL+B simultaneously or go to Hosts menu and select “Manage Backups…”. Click on the Create Backup button to backup your current HOSTS file.

To update your HOSTS file, click on the middle button that says “Update Hosts” when you run HostsMan.
Edit HOSTS file
Check MVPS Hosts, hpHosts, Mike’s Ad Blocking Hosts, Peter Lowe’s AdServers List and click the Update button. It will then check for updates and prompt you if you want to continue to update hosts file. Click Yes to continue. Next, it will download all 4 hosts files, delete duplicates and update your HOSTS file. The next thing you’ll notice on HostsMan is the number of Hosts Names that has been increased to tens of thousands.
Update HOSTS list

Please take note that your hosts file can be “hijacked”, or used for malicious purposes. For example, adware, computer viruses, trojan horses, or other malware can edit the hosts file (particularly on Windows-based systems) to redirect traffic from a “safe” site (such as Google) to sites hosting content that may be offensive or intrusive to the user or the user’s computer system.

If you’re afraid of your hosts file being hijacked, you can use limited accounts for normal everyday use. Not only it can protect your HOSTS file, but all system and program files as well.

Download HostsMan v3.0.42

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Bypass Website Registration

You’re browsing the web and you click a link to an article on a site (let’s say nytimes.com) but instead of getting the article you get a screen asking you to login or register. Most of the time I don’t really use my real information to register. I can easily use a temporary disposable email address to sign up and then verify my membership in order to be a member of the website. I think the biggest reason why most of us don’t like registering to view full contents is we don’t want to give people our real information away. Imagine if every site in the world required registration to access content! That’d really be annoying and the whole world has your info!

Here’s a very useful website which “shares” logins so you don’t need to waste your time in registering an account to access a website that requires compulsory registration.

Avoid website registration
BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times). All of the username and password listed on BugMeNot are added by users. So if the first login don’t work, you can try the second one. If you can’t find a working login for a site then you can register with that site using fake details and then do BugMeNot a favor by adding to the list for other users to use.

To find login for a website, just visit BugMeNot.com, type the website address and click on the “Get Logins” button. It will then show you the list of logins found with username, password and also the success rate. If you see a low percentage of success rate, chances are it won’t work. So don’t bother wasting your time in trying to use that login.
Search BugMeNot login

Some websites such as pay-per-view which require users to pay money to access the site, banking and e-commerce websites can be blocked from BugMeNot system by easily submitting a request form. At least we know that BugMeNot is not a website that shares all sorts of hacked passwords. It’s for our own convenience.

Currently BugMeNot has logins for 162679 sites. Unfortunately, there is no way to view the list of websites that has logins on BugMeNot. You can only do a search from BugMeNot website.

To make Firefox users life easier, there’s a great plugin that works with BugMeNot. Simply install the plugin, then visit any website such as New York Times website and click on the login. You’ll then see a form which ask you to input the Member ID or E-Mail Address and Password. RIGHT CLICK in a username or password text field to see the option “Login with BugMeNot”. Click on it and it’ll automatically search for logins from BugMeNot and automatically input into the text field.
Login with BugMeNot

You can access some of the options in BugMeNot extension by going to Tools -> Add-ons and click on the Options button when you highlight BugMeNot. By default, all four options are unchecked and in my opinion, it’s the best setting already.
Bypass Website Registration

Please note that BugMeNot’s Firefox extension is NOT created by BugMeNot. It is created by Eric from RoachFiend.

Download BugMeNot Firefox Extension

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