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What happened to hpHosts website?


BFeely

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I've noticed recently hpHosts has been slow (much slower than usual) to load site reports, the homepage doesn't indicate new additions since August 2019, and the site report pages often have "Failed to resolve" errors on the report's IP address and hosting boxes.

What's happened to hpHosts, and will it ever be brought back to a workable state?

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  • Root Admin

We are currently restructuring hpHosts and it will no longer be updated. You could however check out our browser extension product.

Malwarebytes Browser Guard
https://www.malwarebytes.com/browserguard

Filters out annoying ads and scams while blocking trackers that spy on you.

The browser extension that beats the scammers

Malwarebytes Browser Guard crushes unwanted and unsafe content, giving you a safer and faster browsing, Not only that, it is the world’s first browser extension that can identify and stop tech support scams. We take on the bad guys so you don’t have to.

 

Edited by AdvancedSetup
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It is also getting to the point that trying to use a HOSTS file in Windows is becoming more trouble than it is worth with Windows 10 making it very difficult.  Static block lists are also a very reactive solution to a problem that changes rapidly in that new malicious sites pop up constantly and often have short lives so that by the time they reach a static block list they might not even exist any more and could have already been replaced by some other site which is unknown to the makers of the block list and which itself will soon be replaced by yet another site.  This is why a more proactive behavior based solution is necessary and why using a combination of tools to safeguard browsing is important.  I do still use a large HOSTS file for blocking content, however it is not my only tool and definitely is not what I rely on primarily for blocking malicious content on the web.

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hpHosts was used in default installations of Pi-hole, a network-wide adblocker, specifically its "Ad servers" list.  Lists have also been used by other third parties.  Shutting this down and removing access to the data to me seems quite short-sighted.

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On 5/7/2020 at 6:56 PM, AdvancedSetup said:

No we will not be providing additional resources at this time

 

Does this mean you have ceased all partnerships with WOT?  If so, that is very unfortunate for both Malwarebytes and WOT users.

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I do not think it was "partnership" per say. It was that WOT just used the HP hosts lists like many others who did the same to incorporate them into it.  There was nothing wrong with that because they were free to download.

There are thousands or more of additions and removals a day to keep a list like that accurate and viable is next to impossible. Most bad sites come and go within a 48 to 72 hour time period.

When Malwarebytes hired the developer of HP Hosts I am sure it was to integrate his expertise in to Malwarebytes products.

On a personal note, I have not used or recommended WOT in a very long time. It was more of a crowd voting system that flagged good sites and missed bad ones, at least back then.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Amaroq_Starwind said:

You can probably still access the website on the Wayback Machine, aka the Internet Archive.

Even so, There are not going to be any additions or subtractions. That list would be static. AKA next to useless if not getting updates.

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