I recently started seeing the following message displayed on certain websites in place of what would normally have been advertising banners:

This site/picture is blocked by the HOSTS file!

I was all like, “What the hell?” but through some clever deduction and internet searching, I discovered the likely cause. I recently installed an updated version of KazaaLite on my computer, with all the anti-adware/spyware stuff. Plus I installed a new version of Ad-Aware. One of those two must have modified my host file. But just what the hell does that mean? I’m not 100% sure on the technical details, but basically if you add sites to this file listing, then you can trick your computer into ignoring content which is served in the form of ads from those web addresses. Kind of handy. Especially since you can always go through on a case-by-case basis and decide what to see and not to see. Arguably, it’s kind of a bitch, being so tedious. But seemingly worthwhile. Perhaps there is some automated tool available to help you out in this. I’ll have a look around.

On a related note, I’ve been giving more thought lately to encrypting certain of my activities online, just for the hell of it. It is an entertaining diversion, as well as good training while the police-state ramps up to full gear. I started investigating so-called darknets, which basically let you share files and content in a securely encrypted space among only trusted users that you personally approve. So these companies are unable to track you. Seems that one of the most popular ones is a program called WASTE, which let’s you do file-sharing and chatting. I’m gonna install it here and hopefully enlist some fellow conspirators to join it.

Plus I want to install GnuPG so I can start encrypting emails and stuff. This is especially tantalizing, since now that I use Gmail, Blogger, and the Google Toolbar, I’m sure a nice healthy data profile exists for me somewhere out there. While I’m confident that I will always remain more complicated than any data-analysis algorithm (seeing as I’m a real live human, and humans always win in the end), it can’t hurt to throw a wrench into the works.