Hostblock for Windows

Hostblock does exactly what its name suggests: it lets you manage a list of blocked host addresses. However, despite its straightforward name and user interface, novice users might find the concept hard to grasp thanks to a missing help feature.

Plain and somewhat boring in appearance, the user interface comes preset with thousands of blocked host addresses. Using the menu options at the top of the window display, you can add, delete, and search for addresses; although, you'll need to know the exact address to perform the search. It doesn't allow for partial or keyword searches. Adding and deleting addresses is simply a matter of entering the address in the field and clicking a button. We were able to export and import the addresses by clicking the appropriate menu options, and didn't encounter any problems doing so. The IE Btn command adds a Hostblock button to your IE toolbar so that you can block host files as you browse the Web.

The About menu opens a very short FAQ window, but we would have liked to have seen an actual Help menu to aid novice users. Still, we recommend Hostblock for anyone looking for simple, straightforward, and free program to block specific host addresses.