On Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:17:46 -0400, "siljaline" <siljaline@nospam.com>
wrote:

><bhollingson@nospam.com> wrote:
>>I want to use my hosts file to block Ebay. I strongly dislike ebay,
>> no longer have an account with them, and dont want to get linked to
>> their site every five minutes. Apparently Google is sleeping with
>> Ebay because everytime I do a google search it seems I end up on ebay
>> even though I dont click on the links that have "ebay" in them.
>>
>> I put the obvious line "ebay.com" in my HOSTS file, but there seem to
>> be a million variations and traps that put me into an ebay page.
>>
>> Anyone know of a sure fire method to completely block ebay from
>> loading on my screen (without shutting off the computer).
>
>Assuming Windows XP, add this to your HOSTS file.
>"127.0.0.1 ebay.com" (no quotes).
>Read the following for tips:
>http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hostsfaq.htm#Editor
>
>Silj

Thanks. The link has some real useful info.
Actually I ma running Win98se. But I can see the hosts files are
about the same.

The problem with ebay blocking is that google and other search engines
are allowing links that do not even say ebay, not to mention that
google seems to be a major supporter for ebay. As an example, I
recently was searching for some information about an electronics
device and got just under 19,000 hits from google. Using -ebay in
the search, I got down to about 11,000 hits (that means that 8000 hits
was just for ebay.) The problem is that there are numerous links that
end up going to ebay, and they do not have the word "ebay" in the URL.
For example google directed me to a site called something like
"electronics depot" (probably not the exact name). The site looked
like a site having nothing to do with ebay, but surprise, every item
is an ebay listing.

I want to completely block ebay if that is possible. It's not just
the fact that I will not do business with ebay, but also that I seem
to waste hours every time I try to search for most items these days,
waiting for useless ebay links to load. I am on a dialup connection
because that is all I can get. If it's not bad enough that about one
of every two links go to ebay, but that most of the time the link does
not even go to the specific item, but only starts a search on ebay.
I'm not sure if ebay is doing this, the search engines (esp google)
are causing it, or if it's external spammers. Either way, I want to
block everything that links to ebay. Using "127.0.0.1 ebay.com" is
not enough. There are so many variations that I dont know where to
start. Like www.cgi.ebay.com etc...

I really did not come here to cut down ebay. I choose not to use
them, want to avoid linking to their site, but how?

Thanks