I saw quite a few of you liked the post I made yesterday about blocking ads using the Hosts.txt file. Well in follow up to that I am posting some info on a program I have been using for the past year, that I think has been very useful. I have had no problems with it, and it is extrememly customizable. The program is called Proxomitron. Please don't take this post as a spam trying to promote proxomitron. Like I said, I have been using it, and it works very well, and I am positive that some people here will find the program extremely useful.

I won't go into too much details about the program. But I will explain some basics about it that make it useful. First of all, how proxomitron works is it basically runs some kind of proxy on your computer. Now before everyone starts screaming "security! security!", only the computer that proxomitron is running on can connect to proxomitron. You set your browser to browse through proxomitron, and proxomitron uses the web filters you specify to filter the code that your web browser receives from that site. The web filter's are pretty neat. There are all sorts of pre-made filters that disable intrusive java script code, and pop-up windows. You can freeze animated gifs, and replace banner ads with simple text links.

Now what is great about this program, is those are ONLY the pre-made filters. This is the part that a lot of you might find interesting. Proxomitron has a built in filter language. You can create your own web filters. The language is really simple to learn, and I have used it to create web filters that kill banner ads being loaded only from certain web servers such as flycast.com, and doubleclick.net. And it does work like a charm. It is actually pretty impressive considering how crappy other freeware programs seem to be.

I am pretty sure Proxomitron only works for Windows, not linux. I have checked the internet for vulnerabilities for this program, and I haven't found any. So security wise it seems pretty reliable. So if any of you would like to take a look at it, which I really suggest that you do, below is the link to the distribution web site. I am sure a lot of you will find this program useful, especially if you want to be able to control how you view the web. So enjoy!

http://www.proxomitron.org/