Sure, thanks for the quick reply:
ls -al /etc/hosts*
-rw-r--r-- 1 nemo nemo 83 Feb 24 15:06 /etc/hosts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 83 Jul 3 2019 /etc/hosts.backup
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 432936 Dec 2 18:07 /etc/hosts.backup.2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 337823 Feb 24 15:06 /etc/hosts.custom
readlink /etc/hosts
So readlink does not return anything, hosts.backup is the backup of the original file which I restored to the hosts file and the other two are different versions of a custom hosts file.