How to stop the wibiya toolbar from loading on sites

[universal4]

Are you tired of seeing the wibiya toolbar loading on some of the sites you visit?

Well now you don't have to see it anymore.

Sure there are a number of plugins etc to get rid of this annoyance on some browsers, but if you are like me and use a number of browsers for different functions, it can be a pain trying to keep track of the plugins....

All you need to do is add a single line to your hosts file. The hosts file is located in the windows system folder which is normally C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc.

If you run Windows Vista or Windows 7 you will need to run notepad as administrator in order to be able to save the file after editing.

All you need to add to the host file is
127.0.0.1 cdn.wibiya.com
That's it, and save the file.

Now close your browser, reopen it and visit a website that has that little bugger at the bottom and you will no longer see it load and slow down page views...

Rick
Universal4

[dangoth1]

Interesting.

[TheGooner]

LOL - Dangoth1 outed as a Wibiya owner / developer ...
IF you are going to try and pretend to be a drive-by poster ... at least be subtle about it ...

I've never seen or heard of wibiya at all - is it a porn site thing?

[usaonlinecasino]

I have never seen or heard of it. Hope it will never come to me.

[universal4]

This is NOT something that only shows up on wibiya's site, but I have seen it on more and more sites lately......and a small bit of searching reveals that it's use is on the rise, AND visitors overall find it annoying.....

....search volume on how to remove or stop it is increasing and YES that is a good indicator visitors do NOT like this....

Rick
Universal4

[pgaming]

Hey Rick this toolbar runs a affiliate program. I heard they pay fair and track properly lol. JK

greek39

[universal4]

I shoulda figured you'd say that.....lol

Rick
Universal4

[FictionNet]

I've never heard of wibiya either :/

[universal4]

If anyone wants to see what the bar looks like, just visit the main domain and you will see it at the bottom.

It doesn't install anything and of course once you apply my fix above, you won't see it after returning.....

Rick
Universal4

[FictionNet]

Ah.... okay, I've seen it out and about and yes, it is very crap and annoying.

[Leo]

Thanks for posting the solution here.

I've seen the bar on plenty of websites in the past, but it really seems like it's becoming a lot more common in 2012, just in the last week I've seen it TOO many times and it's getting annoying. I'm implementing your solution now.

[xecutable]

Hmm is this necessary Rick? I see that some casino affiliate programs use it like CastleAffiliates. The purpose of the toolbar is mostly to tweet, share on facebook, as well as see youtube videos of the site's channel.

Since it loads with the website I think it tracks some sort of statistics as well. I will forward this thread to Dave, maybe he can give us some insights as they are actually using it.

[universal4]

I find it annoying as do others, so workarounds to remove it are welcome to those who do not like it.

If any affiliate properties use it, are all the links contained within the toolbar tracked to the affiliate, or are they tracked without affiliate tags?

Rick
Universal4

[davemerry]

Hmm is this necessary Rick? I see that some casino affiliate programs use it like CastleAffiliates. The purpose of the toolbar is mostly to tweet, share on facebook, as well as see youtube videos of the site's channel.

Since it loads with the website I think it tracks some sort of statistics as well. I will forward this thread to Dave, maybe he can give us some insights as they are actually using it.

Cheers for the notification Mikto

I've noticed it a lot recently as well and wanted to see if it would be a worthy addition to CastleAffiliates and even potentially further, so we added it a few days back as a test. I try and keep an open mind with these type of things, I find when you work on the internet full time you become frustrated with anything intrusive to your activity, but to the average user it may be something they could interact with and aid there experience.

You're right about the volume for removing it Rick, that might be enough to put me off for future use in itself actually. I can see that it is gone now and I'll be looking at the results when I get back from LAC - I'll post here to let you know. We're obviously not a massive high traffic site, but it should be interesting to see whether any social activity increased.