What are these 127.0.0.1 entries in my system hosts file?

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What are these 0.0.0.0 entries in my system hosts file?

In addition to routing anti-malware sites to 127.0.0.1, I have seen malware actually direct it to their own sites.

Imagine what would happen if your hosts file pointed www.google.com to an IP address owned by a "bad guy", and instead of searching via Google, you were searching using a paid advertising site. Even if it did nothing else to your system, it would make money for the "bad guy".

What a fantastic article! I've been trying to get my head-around the hosts file for a while, this explained it perfectly.

Now, the path to it! ....\etc\ Is that pronounced 'et cetera' or is it an acronym? Or neither?

Just wondered, because I occasionally direct someone to this location & wonder if I'm saying *ETC* (The letters), or 'Et Cetera'.

Just for reference!.....

Great article though, now I understand!

The anti-spyware program I use puts blocked sites into the hosts list. I use spybot. If you are using that program then that is where that long list of sites came from.

No Leo, it's not an incorrect attempt to do the same thing as 127.0.0.1 I think, because there are hundreds of 0.0.0.0-entries and they come from the RogueRemoverPro application.

When I first started using the hosts file and did dome reading about it, the advice for blocking sites was to use 0.0.0.0 which would do the same thing as 127.0.0.1
The problem was that on some XP machines (and I’ve never heard a satisfactory reason for why) it would cause the machine to respond slowly or crash. This happened to me and I used the alternative instead. Maybe the advent of the XP problem has led to 0.0.0.0 never being suggested anymore.

Ok now what if you dont have anything in that file is that good or bad. When I follow the path "\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts" hosts shows it as being a file and no files in it. Ok so some of us only know how to turn it on...

The routing tables use 0.0.0.0 to signify the default network connection in XP. I would think specifying this in your host file would just cause your computer to time out and get confused.

Definitely cause slow downs...

I've gone throuh this article and also the comments and found it very enlightening. Thanks - EFernandez

what if my hosts file does not contain a 127.0.0.1 number or a 0.000...etc number? i am trying to block a website on google chrome and i have no idea how to do it.....please help....

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