AIM 6.0 Ad Removal Hack
Recently I downloaded the new AIM 6.0 for Windows. I don’t want to this to turn into a review of the new client, but I do want to say I am a huge fan. My main problems with previous versions of the official AIM clients were that they were littered with bugs and less then user friendly designs. For the most part AIM 6.0 as cleared all this up. Unfortunately the ad on the buddy list itself is still there.
While this ad space on the list is a nuisance, I have my own concerns about the security of such ads. Since they are from 3rd party providers (not AOL itself), it makes me wonder if this space could eventually be used as a carrier for exploits. Sure, this may be paranoid thinking, but as the old cliché goes, better to be safe than sorry.
My theory behind removing the ads was simple – just block the connection to the ads. The first step was close down all those little programs that liked to talk to the internet (skype, gmail notifier, etc). Next, I booted up wireshark and starting listening while I signed on to aim. From there it was simply a matter of analyzing the conversation between the client and all its outbound connections. With a little trial and error I was able to map out the dubious domains. Utilizing my Hosts file I was able to prevent the AIM client from successfully retrieving ads.
Without further adieu…
- Open your hosts file (%systemroot%/system32/drivers/etc) with a text editor - I recommend wordpad.
- Add entry 127.0.0.1 ar.atwola.com (removes the ads)
- Add entry 127.0.0.1 ads.web.aol.com (doesn't remove the ads, but added for good measure)
As you can see, the ad removal is simply a matter of adding two lines to the hosts file. Unfortunately, while this does remove the ads, it does not remove the designated space for the ad. Also, an interesting side effect - apparently it removes ads from the aol.com-related sites as well.
7 comments:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Aim_60_Ad_Hack/1072273953/1
Doesn't really help solve the whole "exploit carrier" dilemma, but it does prevent the installation of ads, as well as other "bundled" software that comes with Triton.
Additionally, I'd probably use notepad over wordpad. Wordpad has a wonderful habit of adding unnecessary non-plaintext characters to files.
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm is a great resource for a hostsfile that you can download -- similar to your suggestion of blocking AOL's ad servers, this goes and blocks lots of OTHER ad servers!
@jess
Though I assume it works very well, the link you provided is to an executable program - which is what I was trying to avoid. Because of its very nature, many of us would rather not run a program without trusting the provider or at least knowing its underlying source (for fear of viruses, trojans, rootkits, etc). The solution I proposed does not have the possibility of installing any sort of malware on the system.
As for notepad over wordpad, I used to prefer notepad, but recently I have been coming across more and more files that notepad doesn't handle correctly, but wordpad displays perfectly. Until wordpad let's me down it'll be my text editor of choice. Of course, either one will do the job, so it's just a matter of personal preference.
Vim...Emacs...I'll even take Pico... anyone? Naa I didn't think so.
Hooray vim! Thanks for the info Steve.
it worked great, but now i get 2 annoying messages every time i start AIM. It says i need to debug with Microsoft script ecitor.
Thanks for the great info! This hack works like a charm! Now if there was just a way to get the ad space removed to expand the buddy list!
Thanks again!
I have always hated the AIM ads always making noise while im playing music and games on my computer, so my boyrfriend started looking for ways to get rid of them. He found a forum telling how to do it without using hosts. your actually changing the format of the program and this will remove the annoying blank space at the top of the buddy list.
http://www.bigblueball.com/forums/aim-support/38662-how-remove-ads-aim-6-0-a.html
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