Racket version of the Winhelp2002 hosts file batch installer.
Blocks most ads, adware, malware, spyware and some viruses through a blacklist of known malicious Web hosts. Does not usually affect ad-blocker detection on most browsers. In my opinion it is indispensable to many Windows installs, especially servers. Enormously accelerates Web page loading times through avoiding to download banners and graphic ads, sometimes including horrible video overlays which deserve their place in hell.
Viruses and malware that try to call home (usually through random domain names etc.) are locked in, but I wouldn't depend on that layer alone and install Malwarebytes on Windows.
The program downloads the latest HOSTS file from the official Web site, makes a backup copy of your current HOSTS file to HOSTS.MVP, then overwrites your HOSTS file with the blacklist. Must be run as Administrator on Windows.
If linux people want one I'll make one for sudo use. Personally I cron a script that wget's and appends it straight to /etc/hosts after backup on BSD.
Personally I think downloading the whole hosts file is over-specification, why?
Because if that domain/server is hacked it can be used to provide a whole other hosts file,
one that may not have 0.0.0.0 everywhere but "ip for phising site" instead.
That is why I would manually review and update such a list.
An alternative would be to actually parse the file and validate it or download the domain list it is based on directly and generate the hosts file yourself.
That way a malicious actor could cause you to block your access to e.g. youtube, but they can't provide a redirect to their server hosting a fake version of it.
Other than that such a host file that blocks lots of shady domains is probably quite useful.
The downloading the full file without some kind of checking is my biggest concern with it, but that could be added.
@simonls is right to be careful, but with this sort of tool it is easy to quickly inspect the code to verify you trust https://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt.
Thank you for the feedback. @simonls correct, it is risky. Maybe a better tool would open a text viewer on the source URL to allow for a quick check before update.
An even better tool would periodically propose to update the HOSTS, to keep up with blacklist additions.