Ad Removal

[dkratter]

While doing a little packet sniffing earlier today, I realized something that might not be so obvious to some people: just because you remove the advertisements from AIM by using AIM+'s "Remove Ads" option doesn't mean AIM is no longer requesting the ads from AOL. AIM+ is just hiding the ads, not stopping them, and this means all the network traffic to and from AOL occurs as usual.

The only two ways to actually stop the traffic would be to set up a firewall rule to block outbound traffic to the AOL ad servers or to stop AIM from sending the outbound requests in the first place.

The first choice, to set up a firewall rule, is a little difficult. AIM receives its ads from ads.web.aol.com. However, this hostname resolves to sixteen different IPs:

• 64.12.174.153
  64.12.174.185
  64.12.184.25
  64.12.184.57
  64.12.184.89
  64.12.184.121
  152.163.226.25
  152.163.226.57
  152.163.226.89
  152.163.226.121
  153.163.226.153
  152.163.226.185
  205.188.165.57
  205.188.165.121
  205.188.165.185
  205.188.165.249

To block each of these would be impractical (more firewall rules = longer processing time = slower traffic). You could block the entire 64.12.174.*, 64.12.184.*, 152.163.226.* and 205.188.165.* ranges, but these could change at any time, and new IPs could be added outside of the current ranges, as well.

The second option is to prevent AIM from requesting the advertisements. This is accomplished simply by modifying one text file in the AIM directory. Assuming the default installation location, look for the file C:\Program Files\AIM95\aim.odl. Open it in a text editor, and search for the line "on_group(5)". Put a semi-colon (;) in front of that line and the three lines below it. Do the same for the "on_group(11)" section. When you are finished, you should have the following:

Code: Select all

;on_group(5)
;{
;        load_ocm        advert       required
;}
;on_group(11)
;{
;        load_ocm        advert       required
;}

This prevents AIM from loading the advertisement module (advert.ocm). Save the file, exit AIM, and restart AIM+. AIM will no longer request ads and your network traffic will be reduced significantly.

[elitemrp]

block ads.web.aol.com from your HOSTS file.

C:\WINDOWS\HOSTS for win9x

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts for NT/2K/XP

(paths may be different on your system)

just put

0.0.0.0 ads.web.aol.com

and save it.

[timrosenfeld]

I use the HOSTs file to block AOL ads as well as most other ad services. You can get a premade HOST file of your own from here