Hosts windows file

[cats_Paw]

Hi,
I got a question id like to bounce off at this forum. Ive seen many forums talking about how to block cerain webpages using the loopback ip 127.0.0.1 in the hosts file. I was wondering if doing that has a security issue.
Any information regarding this would be usefull.

 

[Ijack]

This causes no security issues. All it means is that when the browser tries to go to that particular website it will look for it on the local computer (which will, of course, fail).

 

[cats_Paw]

So this way you can potentially block your computer from another user going to dangerous web i assume, right?

 

[Ijack]

It's not a foolproof way of stopping a determined user, but it's a simple measure to apply. If you really want to block access to particular sites it is more effective to use firewall rules and/or dedicated blocking software.