Here's a massive list that you can add to your existing hosts file that should make being on the internet a much more pleasant experience. The guy regularly updates the list and does it all for free. Also, if you're not sure what a hosts file is or how to edit it, take a break from playing those games for a few minutes and google it. If you're still having issues just ask. We don't mind helping out those that are trying to learn.
 

# Use this file to prevent your computer from connecting to selected
# internet hosts. This is an easy and effective way to protect you from
# many types of spyware, reduces bandwidth use, blocks certain pop-up
# traps, prevents user tracking by way of "web bugs" embedded in spam,
# provides partial protection to IE from certain web-based exploits and
# blocks most advertising you would otherwise be subjected to on the
# internet.
 

http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

I've been using this list for a while, along with the one from mvps [ http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt ]

It has a couple specific entries that break a couple things, because some sites depend on certain ad cdns to work properly, and the top two entries in google searches break because of sponsored placement, but for the most part having a massive hosts file is very valuable from a security/performance perspective. I have a script I wrote that runs nightly and merges the two lists with my own hosts file, killing duplicate entries and maintaining things like the redirects needed for adobe app license validation. I redirect them to 0 instead of localhost, because it kills the resolution attempt with a lot less overhead, especially when running a local webserver during development.

Its maintained enough that with a little bit of common sense [no public trackers or dirty sites], that I've gone antivirus free for two years on my laptop, with 1-2 Terabytes of traffic a month, with zero malware to date. A pretty decent passive threat mitigation system for significantly less resources than active AV software needs to monitor connections. And if somehow a threat did get through, its very unlikely it would be able to phone home. I still run a malware scan every once in a while to be safe, but its been a pretty solid standin for having some active AV behemoth sucking up your performance constantly.

Significant performance benefit over adblock as well, since it kills things at a lower layer. There's generally an error message where the ad should be saying it couldnt be loaded, but I prefer that to the blank space anyways, since it disrupts page flow less. On ad heavy pages, I generally notice around a 100-200ms difference as compared to how things perform with adblocker kililng them instead, and that adds up quick on pages where you navigate a lot. Its less important on more asynchronous pages, but its still a plus.

What I do want to say is that it takes a decent system to run. With 7 figures of entries, the local dns resolver can get kind of nonresponsive [you'll quickly learn to flush your dns] and I hear less modern systems do get a little sluggish handling that many lines. Still, I just pull the lists once on my family members computers, explain that it blocks a lot of ads and viruses and stuff, and it drastically reduces the number of calls I get for "I downloaded some toolbar and now my email is broken." Much less frequent ID ten T errors to fix.