Sending ad requests to the bit bucket

To send ad requests from your browser to the bit bucket, a common trick is to use the hosts file to send ad farm HTTP requests to a non-existent server.

A non-existent server can make the browser wait too long for gobs of HTTP requests.

So, give a machine running Apache an interface for an IP address that isn’t used on your local network. 192.168.99.99, for instance. Or 10.252.252.252.

Then add this sort of thing to your /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/200-vhosts file:

<VirtualHost 10.252.252.252>
  ServerName    helload
  DocumentRoot  /var/www/spam_ad_dir/
  ErrorLog      /var/log/apache2/spam_ad_error.log
  CustomLog     /var/log/apache2/spam_ad_access.log combined
  RedirectMatch 403 /* 
</VirtualHost>

Change the IP address as appropriate. And, you can make an empty directory at /var/www/spam_ad_dir/

For amusement, read the spam_ad_access.log.