Outsmart Outbrain!

and other ad networks and browsing data syndicators by blocking the most notorious domains via hosts file entries.

Here is section of my hosts file:

127.0.0.1 cdn.optmd.com
127.0.0.1 as.casalemedia.com
127.0.0.1 a.tribalfusion.com
127.0.0.1 a1.zedo.com
127.0.0.1 c1.zedo.com
127.0.0.1 c5.zedo.com
127.0.0.1 d3.zedo.com
127.0.0.1 flashtalking.com
127.0.0.1 servedby.flashtalking.com
127.0.0.1 tag.admeld.com
127.0.0.1 rma-api.gravity.com
127.0.0.1 js.admeld.com
127.0.0.1 a.collective-media.net
127.0.0.1 objects.tremormedia.com
127.0.0.1 tags.crwdcntrl.net
127.0.0.1 ad.crwdcntrl.net
127.0.0.1 traffic.outbrain.com
127.0.0.1 paid.outbrain.com
127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 bs.serving-sys.com
127.0.0.1 cdn.insights.gravity.com
127.0.0.1 madclient.uimserv.net
127.0.0.1 ping.chartbeat.net

You can easily add to this by going through the list of cookies that your browser is storing. The ones that you can’t identify are most likely 3rd party cookies. Once you added these and other domains to your hosts file, delete the cookies in your browser and there won’t be any new ones from these vendors. There will be the occasional dead link, though, because more and more content sites use Outbrain to handle there internal “you may also like” recommendations. That’s a small price to pay, though. I can always find the linked articles by just Googling for the link title.