Unable to access any site that starts with clicks.aweber.com

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I can’t access any links that begins with clicks.aweber.com on any of my 3 computers. I have had this problem with all marketers using the clicks.aweber.com and am sure it has to do with some antivirus program I have installed but can’t figure out what the cause is. I have tried disabling firewalls, and popup blockers. I have tried to open in Thunderbird, FireFox, IE, Safari and Crome on 3 different computers but nothing works. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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Do you have a hosts file which has anything other than default entries?

What A/V program/suite do you have installed?

Is there any proxy server involved?

Joe

--Joe

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WELL, my computer goes there, but maybe it shouldn’t. That’s a marketing software website “A Weber Marketing”.

It’s the type of site that many Anti-malware programs would block as UN-Safe. I’m not even certain, why my own protection allowed me to get there in both I.E. and Firefox. Looks like I might need to “Tighten UP!”.

But for the life of me, I can’t imagine just WHY you need to go there. I sure didn’t see anything there that I or most users would be interested in.

Look in your HOSTS file and see if it’s entered there. It must be!

Just the word “Click” normally indicates a Spyware site. Like “DoubleClick”, a very well knows Spyware site.

Good Luck to you though, and Happy Holidays!

The Doctor

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OK,,,,,, I found the crux of the problem.

Your hosts file is enabled and in it is the URL for the site you’re trying to get to.

I have a program that I don’t use a lot, called “Hosts Manager”. I just installed it and turned ON my own HOSTS file which has been OFF for, how long I don’t know, and sure enough I could not get to that site.
In fact, I couldn’t get to this one either. lol

So you either need to disable your hosts file, or delete it all together. That could be dangerous though.

I’d rather just edit the HOSTS file and remove the addresses of the places that you really NEED to get to.

Good Luck with that. I had to turn OFF my own Hosts file, just to get back here. Go figure!

Once you find your HOSTS file, you can edit it in Notepad, if that’s what you really want to do.
It’s nothing more than a very long text file.

Happy Holidays!
The Doctor

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A few random thoughts:

The problem exists over three machines, so it is something common to all of them, rather than on one machine.

Could the ISP be blocking access to that location? Do you have the same antivirus, firewall and security settings on all PC’s (check rather than assume). Is your router configured to reject certain sites? These are all common to each machine.

Regarding the Hosts file: this simple text file is used to map IP addresses against hosts (PC’s webservers, FTP servers or any other host). These hosts could be internet based hosts or local hosts – locally based programs for example. Sometimes malware attacks the hosts file and injects entries that redirect normal websites to malicious IP addresses.

You cannot turn off the hosts file – it is a file that exists or doesn’t exist. It is not an active component that you can turn on or off. You can however adjust Internet Explorer and other browsers to either lookup the hosts file or not. If you use Hosts redirection via your browser, this will be in addition to using DNS requests to your router and ISP (I think this also can affect NETBIOS lookups but not sure). But even if you do use Hosts redirect, nothing will occur unless there is an entry in the hosts file.

The Hosts file is located at %windir%system32driversetc and can be edited using notepad.

A clean Hosts file looks like this:

Code:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#	127.0.0.1       localhost
#	::1             localhost

If you have any other entries in the hosts files on all three machines, consider how those entries could have got there. Due to the inherent dangers of having malicious entries in a Hosts file, any program that makes changes to the Hosts file should always do so at your specific request or with your explicit approval.

If for example, you have an entry that says something like

Code:

127.0.0.1   aweber.com

then all traffic destined for that location will be redirected to you the local host , i.e. your PC, and you will not be able to browse to the location on the web.

As a side comment, running machines from an administrator account makes it easier for malware to inject entries into the Hosts file because that malware already has the same privilege as the user and does not need to elevate privileges to make changes to this protected file. It makes sense to routinely operate a machine at the lowest level of privileges necessary to get the job done.

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The Hosts file is located at %windir%system32driversetc and can be edited using Notepad.

The I’m-dropping-the-back-slash bug bit again.
Should be [ %windir%\system32\drivers\etc ],
or in full [ C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc ].

Note that this is the folder within which is the file named [ Hosts ]. It has no file-type.

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Accidentally launched this and now I can’t reach the sites. Hiw do I get rid if this crap. I am older and a complete novice.

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“and now I can’t reach the sites”.
Which sites: clicks.aweber.com ?

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What did you accidently launch?

cheers, Paul

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WSTinto Tech wrote:

You can however adjust Internet Explorer and other browsers to either lookup the hosts file or not

Nope.
Windows uses HOSTS for all DNS requests whether you want it to or not. This is why adding entries to HOSTS works.

cheers, Paul

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It seems that Peter Lowe’s Ad tracking server list in my uBlock Origin blocks this and other things that start with “click”.

Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's

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Hi,

still get this.  No answers above.  Happens infrequently.  Using Edge.  W11.  Use MS Virus protection.

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“Happens infrequently” = the internet doesn’t always work, it’s run by computers and they are known to fail.

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

SueW

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