<bhollingson@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:msceh3p3nviu2hiud7kjeoan2g44nf8ta2@4ax.com...
> 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?
>

Nothing you will do can completely block them, any more than you can
completely BLOCK poker and porn sites.
Just keep a finger on the "back" button, and keep surfing.

EEKbay knows those links are all redirected to them and spend millions every
year employing third parties to do their dirty work for them so that even if
the search engines blacklist the redirectors, they just hire on a new one
and keep going.

EEKbay knows many are now just not using them so tricking people into
visiting keeps the page counters incrementing, and the folks on Wall street
happy.
Spin-doctors don't care that people have no intention of buying, but they
can say "look how many open our pages every day, we must be Great!"