What are the bad effects (on my computer) of blocking a website using a hosts file?

Question

what are the bad effects (on my computer) of blocking a website using a hosts file? i used xp

Answer 1

None that I am aware of. It is a very simple and easy way to block a website and doesn't cause any conflicts or software problems, unless you need an application to point to that website that you are blocking, but I don't think it's going to be a problem.  

Answer 2

I don't think their is any, make sure you have like a firewall/virus scanner just to be on the safe side

Answer 3

None. Zero. Zilch.

Answer 4

Really nothing. If you redirect it to 127.0.0.1 and don't have a program running to intercept the requests, you'll just get a 404 Not Found or similar error when you try to access the website. If you have a lot of sites in your hosts file you will slow down your computer a bit. But having less than say about 20 or so would be fine.

Answer 5

Unfortunately, the answer is not "zero, zilch, nada".

Fortunately, the answer is "*almost* zero, zilch, nada".

For example, I block numerous advertising sites using my hosts file.  The only bad effect is that some newsletters that I subscribe to use redirects through some of these sites for their click tracking, meaning I sometimes can't go directly to the rest of the article.

However, I find that annoyance to be a small price to pay.

- kb -