Remove hosts-file.net lists

[XhmikosR]

• Remove hosts-file.net from default lists pi-hole/pi-hole#3236
• hpHosts list is discontinued uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues#971
• https://forums.malwarebytes.com/topic/257401-inquiry-regarding-automated-processing-of-hosts-files/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/fsg11e/hostsfilenet/

[WaLLy3K]

I guess they just can't see how to make money off of it, by the sounds of it!

Not sure if my mirrored copies will auto-erase themselves over time, but here's the most recent updates:
https://v.firebog.net/hosts/HPHosts-ads.txt
https://v.firebog.net/hosts/HPHosts-emd.txt
https://v.firebog.net/hosts/HPHosts-exp.txt
https://v.firebog.net/hosts/HPHosts-psh.txt

I'll look into changing the URL's on my collection as soon as possible, as I'm not in a position to do it where I am right now :)

[XhmikosR]

Oh, I didn't know you had a copy of the lists! Do you happen to have their other lists too?

BTW it seems your copies have localhost in them at the top

[WaLLy3K]

HPHosts, no, just these IIRC. They're unmodified from the original, but I suppose I can remove the localhost manually now!

[XhmikosR]

Thanks!

Personally I was using these lists from them:

https://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.txt
https://hosts-file.net/emd.txt
https://hosts-file.net/exp.txt
https://hosts-file.net/fsa.txt
https://hosts-file.net/grm.txt
https://hosts-file.net/hjk.txt
https://hosts-file.net/mmt.txt
https://hosts-file.net/psh.txt

If anyone has a copy of the remaining lists, and if you could host them, that would help a lot of people. 🙂

[tmcqueen-materials]

I am not in a position to host them, but here are some of the latest copies if useful.
HostsAdServers.zip
Hostsemd.zip
Hostsexp.zip
Hostsfsa.zip
Hostsgrm.zip
Hostsmmt.zip
Hostspha.zip
Hostspsh.zip

[dnmTX]

@tmcqueen-materials thanks.Keep the links alive please,at least for a while 👍

[derekslenk]

How much bandwidth is needed to host them?

[XhmikosR]

We can just host them on a GitHub repo. It's just that I personally don't have any copies and also this should be cooperated with @WaLLy3K so that the new URLs are added to his site.

[derekslenk]

Was just offering if we need it in the meantime. I do not want to take over @WaLLy3K's job

[XhmikosR]

I know, I didn't mean it that way 🙂 Just saying that we should do this the right way.

[kravietz]

Unmanaged blocklist is worse than no blocklist in long term. If Malwarebytes is unable to maintain them it's perfectly undestandable, I guess it's time to find a project that does actively maintain them and crowdfund it to provide sustainable motivation to keep it this way.

[XhmikosR]

@WaLLy3K friendly ping 🙂

If you cannot host them, you should remove them from the website and I'm sure someone will offer to host them somewhere. Although, personally, I'd prefer it if the lists were in this repo + your site.

[WaLLy3K]

Unmanaged blocklist is worse than no blocklist in long term. If Malwarebytes is unable to maintain them it's perfectly undestandable, I guess it's time to find a project that does actively maintain them and crowdfund it to provide sustainable motivation to keep it this way.

Given the daunting scale of these lists (and also the sheer amount of false positives I've seen added to these in in the last eight or so years of using them), it's not going to be a case of set and forget host and forget. As much as I don't want to, I think I'm best off to remove these for now because I'd rather not be in the position of dealing with whitelist requests for a handful of reasons.

I've archived the lists that @tmcqueen-materials has thankfully provided over here, but I don't intend on using them for the time being. The bandwidth for them shouldn't be an issue as Cloudflare handles 99% of the bandwidth for me on their free tier.

I'm happy to continue the discussion if anyone has ideas on how this list can continue on, but for the sake of ticket management and what I can do right now, I'll close the ticket off.

Thanks all! :)

[spirillen]

I'm about to posts the Cleaned-up version in this bucket https://bitbucket.org/expiredsources/hosts-file.net/src/master/ Alternate location: https://www.mypdns.org/source/HPhosts/

These would be cleaned with @funilrys PyFunceble over --dns 1.1.1.1

[vuxat]

I downloaded the original hjk.txt file from my pihole:
https://gist.githubusercontent.com/vuxat/f25149898451efc6a2723af7c6643f82/raw/5985279ee61a7a77d4f5a5163460177b6a8b62e2/hosts-file.net_hjk.txt

[VR51]

I can sorta help with the backup file. I'm the originator of Host-Flash, a Linux hosts file manager script. This script builds and updates the hosts file from a range of selectable sources. I have a hosts file build from April 2019 that contains the old lists that were available from hosts-file.net. Here is the sorta part: the April 2019 build is mixed in with lists from multiple sources and there is no way to discern which hosts came from which source. If you want to peruse/use the file its zip can be obtained here https://github.com/VR51/host-flash/tree/master/assets.