Side effects of messing with the hosts file

For the last couple of days I had trouble logging in to my blogger account. I could see my blog but the navigation bar at the top was missing. I tried different things and found out that the problem was with my hosts file (located in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\).

In the past, I had edited my hosts file so that I could access sites like youtube. I had also entered blogger.com (since it is another favourite target of censorship). Perhaps blogger had changed its ip address without informing yours truly. I commented out the blogger lines in my hosts file:

#72.14.207.191 blogger.com
#72.14.207.191 www.blogger.com

Then I opened a command window to check out the ip address of blogger:



As you can see, the ip address is not 72.14.207.191 anymore, it is 74.125.79.191. Mission accomplished.

Interesting note: I could reach blogger.com with UltraSurf. It means that UltraSurf bypasses hosts (besides hiding your ip address).