Disable ads in Viber

Recent version of Viber on Windows started displaying ads. It appeared in sidebar under contacts. There is no GUI option to disable.

How can I disable them?

Solution 1:

I put

127.0.0.1 ads.viber.com
127.0.0.1 ads.aws.viber.com
127.0.0.1 ads-d.viber.com
127.0.0.1 s-bid.rmp.rakuten.com

into my c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts file. Since then I have no ads ;) Hope it'll help for you, too.

I had to block extra addresses (discovered in Proxifier):

ads.cdn.viber.com
ads.*.viber.com
locp-ir.viber.com

Also I had to open preferences and close. Then the effect was achieved.