On 1/23/21 9:30 PM, Tim via users wrote:
Tim:
But, yes, you can blackhole various annoying domain names so that they fail quickly. I've done that for many years with BIND.
Joe Zeff:
And, if you're not hosting your own DNS, you can use /etc/hosts to do the same thing on a machine by machine basis. Of course, this isn't practical if you're running a large LAN, but it's just great for a home user.
I used to do that, but using the hosts file only leaves you with two choices: Give annoying domains a wrong IP to connect to that either tries to load non-existent files from a real server (wasting traffic and filling logs), or tries to connect to a server that isn't there (and waits a long time for a timeout).
I point them to some variation on a localhost IP, e.g. 127.x.x.x. I'm not running a web server, so it immediately fails with can't connect. No delays, no traffic, and doesn't bother anyone.