Blocklist of all Facebook domains • Hacker News Board

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#61

Post by sdfjkl » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

mfo wrote: post #2

I just want to say "Privacy matters, thanks you" (even more when FB decided to leverage their like/share button for a global ad netwotk) :-) non tech saavy guys may love a simple .sh / .bat to automatically add those entries to the /etc/hosts on windows & unix

Telling "non tech saavy guys" to pipe URLs into their shell (or hosts file in this instance) is a pretty bad idea. You're training them to engage in risky behaviour and be even more gullible.

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#62

Post by mp3geek » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

avree wrote: post #32

mp3geek wrote: post #21

Alternatively you can use Adblock to block it. https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-antifacebook.txt Disclaimer, list Author.

Your list blocks fewer things, though.

When a site adds Facebook it's using connect.facebook.* the main bulk of the list is just whitelists for Facebook users (first-party). The hosts file will break all of Facebook even if you visit it directly. The better option is to just block Facebook outside of Facebook.

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#63

Post by danthejam » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:37 PM UTC

avree wrote: post #32

mp3geek wrote: post #21

Alternatively you can use Adblock to block it. https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-antifacebook.txt Disclaimer, list Author.

Your list blocks fewer things, though.

Because his list blocks facebook in other sites but lets you use facebook itself if you ever want to?

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#64

Post by jjuhl » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

mp3geek wrote: post #62

avree wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your list blocks fewer things, though.

When a site adds Facebook it's using connect.facebook.* the main bulk of the list is just whitelists for Facebook users (first-party). The hosts file will break all of Facebook even if you visit it directly. The better option is to just block Facebook outside of Facebook.

No. The better option is to just block facebook everywhere, including direct access.

Just my humble opinion.

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#65

Post by kazinator » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

It's inefficient to specify a large number of hosts in the facebook.com domain instead of blocking the whole domain.

For this, you can run dnsmasq and use the "--address" option or "address" command in dnsmasq.conf:

  $ man dnsmasq
  [...]
       -A, --address=//[domain/]
              Specify an IP address to  return  for  any  host  in  the  given
              domains.   Queries in the domains are never forwarded and always
              replied to with the specified IP address which may  be  IPv4  or
              IPv6.  To  give  both  IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for a domain, use
              repeated -A flags.  Note that /etc/hosts and DHCP  leases  over‐
              ride this for individual names. A common use of this is to redi‐
              rect the entire doubleclick.net domain to  some  friendly  local
              web  server  to avoid banner ads. The domain specification works
              in the same was as for --server, with  the  additional  facility
              that  /#/  matches  any  domain.  Thus --address=/#/1.2.3.4 will
              always return 1.2.3.4 for any query not answered from /etc/hosts
              or  DHCP  and  not sent to an upstream nameserver by a more spe‐
              cific --server directive.

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#66

Post by supergirl » Sat, May 28, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

dramatic and useless.

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#67

Post by falcolas » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

hallatore wrote: post #10

Isn't Ghostery a better solution for something like this? If we are talking about browsers that is.

Ghostery only works with the web browser. Other apps would be free to continue to embed such links or assets from those locations (and based off my own use of a hosts file, it's more common than I'd like to admit).

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#68

Post by curiousgal » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:00 PM UTC

walterbell wrote: post #57

Namidairo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing some sort of crude malware tried to MitM Facebook logins so they started cleaning host files?

Microsoft was an investor in Facebook, http://whoownsfacebook.com and they are planning an undersea cable between the US and Europe that will only be used by the two companies.

What for? I can see Trading companies doing that but why would Microsoft/Facebook need that?

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#69

Post by curiousgal » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

maxschumacher91 wrote: post #36

curiousgal wrote: post #6

Any idea of an easy/quick way to toggle these edits on/off on Ubuntu?

I've put them in my host file and created an alias that switches between naming the host-file "hosts" (which will be recognized by the OS) and hostx. from my .zshrc: #block Twitter, Facebook, reddit and Linkedin. alias on="sudo mv /etc/hostx /etc/hosts" alias off="sudo mv /etc/hosts /etc/hostx"

Awesome! Thanks.

Re: Blocklist of all Facebook domains

#70

Post by nkrisc » Sat, May 28, 2016, 2:02 PM UTC

mfo wrote: post #2

I just want to say "Privacy matters, thanks you" (even more when FB decided to leverage their like/share button for a global ad netwotk) :-) non tech saavy guys may love a simple .sh / .bat to automatically add those entries to the /etc/hosts on windows & unix

All you have to do is copy/paste that into the file using any text editor.