Years ago, before the Internet's domain name system was in place, the local host file was useful, says software engineer and privacy advocate Richard Smith, who operates ComputerBytesMan.com. But now, it's just a relic, he says, kind of like an appendix on Internet software.

"It's useless now," he said. "But it's an attack vector.... This just points out that at some point you have to age out features and get rid of them."
Damn... Where've I been that I didn't realize this was a useless feature? Sucks to be told that features you use are useless...