SeaMonkey and HOSTS file

[SMUser]

First-time install of any SeaMonkey. "Out of the box" 2.53.13win64 doesn't consistently use my HOSTS file for DNS requests. Domain_xyz.com will be blocked and not appear in my DNS request log unless I navigate first to website_abc.com which uses domain_xyz for some of its page content. Domain_xyz will then appear in the DNS request log — bypassing the HOSTS file — but its content does seem to be blocked from the web page.

Is this a case of DNS over HTTPS (DoH)? Doesn't this result in an unintended promotion of undeserved click revenue? How can I have all of my DNS requests filtered by my HOSTS file?

[n0spam]

Yeah, that could be caused by DoH. Funny, I thought SeaMonkey didn't support it. The easiest (and infinitely more powerful and flexible) way to fix this is to run your own local DNS. BIND[1] and Unbound[2] are free and run on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Both aren't hard to configure. I'm using Unbound because BIND stopped working on Windows 7.

Here's a crash course on emulating the hosts file in Unbound.
hosts:

Code: Select all

0.0.0.0 domain_xyz
[::] domain_xyz

Unbound (notice the dot at the end of "domain_xyz."):

Code: Select all

local-data: "domain_xyz. A 0.0.0.0"
local-data: "domain_xyz. AAAA ::"

[1] https://www.isc.org/download/#BIND
[2] https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/download/

[therube]

SeaMonkey doesn't have/use DoH, does it?

[SMUser]

Hmmm. The silence from SeaMonkey support is deafening...

[Wish You Were Here]

^^ My understanding is that there isn't really a SeaMonkey as such ... as in a company. It's volunteers working a project to keep it alive when they have time. Not sure that's 100% accurate, but it's what I've gathered from a number of posts. Those volunteers aren't really identified either, but we can sort of figure out who they are by what they post.