IE8’s most notable new feature is “inPrivate Filtering”:  this is a domain filtering service that is very easily turned on by a button at the bottom of the window, in the status bar.   With one click, the browser blocks content served by third party domains.

In other words, you read content at latimes.com, and latimes.com tries to show you ads that are served by advertising.com.  The advertising.com ads will be blocked when you turn on inPrivate Filtering.   Not right away.  The default setting is that you have to visit 10 websites that call ads from advertising.com before ads are blocked.  If you turn on inPrivate Filtering whenever you surf, then the most popular adservers and analytics domains will quickly reach 10 hits and be blocked.  And they’ll be blocked every time you turn on inPrivate Filtering.

-Colin

This works on PCs, Macs, and Linux/Unix computers.

What’s a “hosts” file?  It’s a file named “hosts”, and every normal computer sold to consumers has one.

A background on hosts files can be found here, on Wikipedia.

Hosts files also block domains that serve popups, inject trojans, and spread viruses.  Basically, you can block any domain you want quickly and easily.  To get a hosts file with more than 16000 blocked domains (yes, there are at least that many ad servers, spammers, trojaners, and nasty virus spreaders out there) , follow the directions given here, on MVPs.org.

MVPs.org are not a bunch of anarchist hackers, they are a group of Microsoft “Most Valuable Professionals” giving free computer advice.  I like to point that out just to reinforce the point that editing your hosts file to block ads is not some bleeding edge tech head idea.  It’s just a sensible thing to do.