I have to read the help section again in Spy-Bot S&D 1.5 under 'immunization'. It's a little over my head but so far I am understanding the 7.5K entries in the hosts file is a list of reported browsing sites that spybot has identified as known to have malicious content. When I understand this more to be true, I will C&P the 7,500 lines of sites. As for the hosts.backup file in \etc\hosts it is the same as my brothers two computers as follows:
Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
Maybe you know someone who has the current v of spybot installed and can view what is in there host file after they have run immunization.
As I said; there are 7.5k lines of web sites in 127.0.0.1
What do you think?