No surprise, Tynt have friends

Following on from when I discovered Tynt and their spammy little ways last year, it probably shouldn't have come as a surprise to discover that other companies have decided to have a swim in the same pond of slime.

The Australian is apparently now using an effectively identical service called CopyNShare, which appends a forced (and no doubt trackable) URL to the end of anything you copy off their site, so copying this:

FORMER communications minister Stephen Conroy was the "root cause" of Labor's "abysmal" handling of the National Broadband Network, according to construction industry heavyweight David Chandler.

Ends up as:

FORMER communications minister Stephen Conroy was the "root cause" of Labor's "abysmal" handling of the National Broadband Network, according to construction industry heavyweight David Chandler. - See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/conroy-root-cause-of-nbn-woes/story-e6frgaif-1226739889457#sthash.5da9bT4Q.dpuf


Why does this irritate me?  Apart from my normal objection at every marketer in the world salivating at yet another opportunity to shove advertising in my face, the appended URL makes it a little more work when using the copy-search trick to bypass the laughably insecure News Ltd paywall.

During some searching for the CopyNShare servers so I could blackhole them, I came across this incredibly useful service.  Basically, they regularly publish a hosts file that you can use to blackhole traffic from a huge range of adware infestations, and just to add to the value, they also block all the spyware and malware C&C servers that they know of.  Absolutely brilliant.


Here's a sample from the start of my current hosts file to give you the idea:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1       localhost
# ::1             localhost

127.0.0.1  localhost

::1  localhost #[IPv6]

# [Start of entries generated by MVPS HOSTS]
#
# [Misc A - Z]
127.0.0.1  fr.a2dfp.net
127.0.0.1  m.fr.a2dfp.net
127.0.0.1  ad.a8.net
127.0.0.1  asy.a8ww.net
127.0.0.1  abcstats.com
127.0.0.1  a.abv.bg
127.0.0.1  adserver.abv.bg
127.0.0.1  adv.abv.bg
# [end of entries generated by MVPS HOSTS]