How can I block a website/IP address from downloading anything?

I use Avast antivirus, and if something is trying to download something, it tells me where it's downloading from. I don't know what I'm doing to get viruses, but I'd like to know, is there a way I can block a specific IP address or website from downloading anything? And if there is a way, how do I do it?

Public Comments

1. If you are accessing the internet through a router, most routers have a built in firewall that you can use to block access to certain pages and IPs. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I'm sure the Windows firewall has similar functionality.
2. If you mean blocking your computer from accessing a certain site, you can do that using the hosts file in windows. http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm Basically what it does is when a certain domain is requested, if it has an entry in the hosts file, it goes to whatever IP is listed for the data. All you have to do is feed it a bogus IP (usually 127.0.0.1) and it will fail every time. That website describes it in more detail. Good luck!
3. There are multiple answers to your question, the most direct and free answer is first, then "more info" is included after this. To block a specific address .. Add an entry to your hosts file. Right-click on your Start button, click on explore, navigate to "my computer", C:, Windows, system32, drivers, etc. Double-click on Hosts, scroll down the "open with" list and click on notepad, it will load Hosts into notepad.. In notepad add the following line: 127.0.0.1 my.blocked.site.com or 127.0.0.1 74.63.77.73 If all you have is the number, then you can put that on the right side. 127.0.0.1 is a special address that points back to your own computer. By putting an address here and pointing it back to your own computer it will never be able to reach the site it's trying to reach. After you enter the address(es) that you want, save the file and reboot your computer. ***** Ok having described how to do that. There are places on the web where people collect lists of sites that they deem "bad" for one reason or another. There are some programs out there for maintaining and even auto-updating your hosts file. ***** The problem you are having is likely a combination infection. It is multi-pronged and likely involves a combination of a malware and a virus. You need to attack it from 3 directions at once, which are the 3 standard security measures most people recommend you have these days. 1. An Anti-Virus 2. A reactive (or post infection) Mal-ware detector / remover. (2 in this case) 3. A firewall You should be fairly confident with each of these that they are doing a good thorough job and can prevent or work on a wide range of what they advertise to work on. 1. An "anti-virus product" detects and removes viruses, trojans, and worms. 2. A "malware" detector detects and removes Adware and spyware. Which is currently defined by the industry as different and separate from a virus. Additionally, within the category of "malware" there are many products that distinguish between "adware" software and "spyware" software. 3. A Firewall, blocks particular incoming packets from the Internet before they are seen by your software. This is a communications traffic cop, it says stop and go to various communications between programs on your computer and those not on your computer. For Antivirus I use AVG, because they have a professional package that they are maintaining, and the "free version" is usually the version that was at some point in time in the past their "professional" for sale version and they continue to update their database of viruses. The database (more so than the program) is the key to detecting and removing a virus, if it is very far out of date then you will not be able to detect more recent viruses, let alone remove them. AVG (for the virus protection) has an ongoing portion that scans programs before they are run. ("resident shield") Check out my source-links for a download link for free AVG. For Malware, I have 2 free programs I use, one of which is again from a professional company like AVG and the other of which I feel has good ongoing work. The two that I use are SpyBot Search and Destroy and Adaware. Go to www.download.com and search for each of these, look for the entries that have humungous numbers of downloads. Again I must emphasize, how up to date the database is is very important. These are "reactive" programs, you run them when you think you have an infection, or just as an ongoing weekly check, once a week on Friday for example. Check out my source-links. And finally your Firewall. For me at the moment, I just use windows firewall on my desktop. A lot of people will make noise and say it's weak and whatever, but I find many of the pay-for products to be either restricting or extremely annoying. A free one you can try is zone alarm. There's also a list of them on download.com. Check out my source-links. 1. Update your Anti-virus database. 2. Install and update your Spybot and Adaware (or equivalent) A crucial part of the process to fix this involves restarting Windows into safe mode. In safe mode, the vast majority of viruses and malware cannot prevent you from removing them or re-instate themselves. (there are a few particularly advanced and nasty ones that can.. but don't worry about those for now.. =) ) To get to safe mode, reboot your computer, when you see your computer maker's screen or the funky technical screen with the info about your cpu and ram, start tapping your F8 key fairly quickly like 2 or 3 times per second. You will get a window that lists several startup options, choose the "safe mode" one. (not safe mode with networking or any other ones) If you do not see that selection screen and windows starts up again, then you missed it and should reboot and try again. Once you're up and have "safe mode" in the four corners of your screen -- 1. Turn off your system restore utility (right click my computer, click properties, click system restore tab, check the box "turn off system restore") after it deletes the restore files, go ahead and turn this back on if you want. ignore messages about it not being on until you restart. 2. Run the scan from your antivirus for your whole computer (or C: drive if it asks) 3. Now run the scan for your Spybot, also note-- there's an "Immunize" option here, do that! 4. Now run the scan for your Adaware 5. Now smile and reboot your computer normally. Cross your fingers and toes. These scans may take a very long time, especially the anti-virus scan. Do all 3 of them before you reboot, otherwise you take the chance that one of them will undo what they others have done. Also, if you do not turn off system restore as part of the process (and then back on), there's a good chance that your system restore will "restore" the viruses/malware for you. (big grin on the irony here). Turning it off deletes your old database of restores, turning it back on makes it start over from scratch with restore information. I hope this helps. I'll make an entry about this on my web-site so I can just pass people a link in the future. Regards, Roger Tiedemann, Jr. roger at rogertdj.com