The Ad-Police

This small utility adds to the Hosts file to block most known advertisement servers but lacks configuration options. AD-Police's sparse interface and missing help file gives novices little program information. The Windows Hosts file maps URL addresses and effectively blocks select URLs from loading in your browser. AD-Police simply loads the names of known browser-banner advertiser servers into the Hosts file. Because browser advertisements slow the loading of some Web pages, this application effectively reduces loading time for those sites. The utility opens the Hosts file to manually add or delete blocked servers. Updating the list requires regular visits to the site, but an auto refresh feature is available upon purchase. During our tests Ad-Police sometimes failed to find the Hosts file, and in those cases the program was useless since the file location could not be manually configured. All in all, any user will find downloading AD-Police worthwhile.