OK. But I'm not clear on a couple of things. One is that does that necessarily imply that merely visiting that site, as I did, automatically infects (or attempts to infect) one with malware? Surely NoScript, my anti-virus, and other tools would have detected the same. Or if they were disguised as the AOL, ICQ, and Facebook objects shown in NoScript, then the site should be notified of same. Does FIRE do this?
Another is my original complaint on the format of the list. Must one take every single entry and look up the links, as you did, or trace them through traceroute and visit them, as I did, to determine the URL and domain name/owner? The Hosts services mentioned have that information in plain--text, readable form, right there in the blacklist. The FIRE list is information-free.
I don't use IRC or ICQ, and the site seemed to have legitimate functions for fans of its type, and hosted by the more-or-less respectable AOL. Still not sure that the site itself needs to be blocked for everyone, and if evildudes have found a way to use it sub rosa for C&C of botnets, for heaven's sake, tell the webmaster.
Still unaddressed is the issue of blocking by IP rather than by URL or domain name, when many legitimate sites change or rotate IPs, especially for load-balancing purposes for large sites with a global user base and multiple IPs.
Thanks for the additional resource information on Fire and the reminder of the possible misuse of legit sites. Seems it would be better if the list itself were more self-explanatory, but it was good to have additional calm and reasoned commentary. (I liked the disclaimer.
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