restricting certain sites.

Creamy Goodness

hey, i'm building a pc for my dad's mate and he has asked me if there's any software that will restrict what his kids can do on the internet, you know the usual stuff like pr0n and all.

just wondering is there any free applications that will do this for him? i know of netnanny but you've got to pay for that.

Fredo

I use my firewall to prevent some people using my PC at home to reach certain sites. If you do a seach on the web with keys words such as: Parental Control Freeware you should get a handful of software.

Creamy Goodness

that naomi is pretty good, just tested it on my machine and i mistakely hid the icon lol had me scared there for a minute as it was blocking certain boards threads.

thanks bedlam this will work perfectly.

Orion

I know this isn't what you're looking for but if you want to just restrict certain sites you can do that within Windows itself.

Find the HOSTS file in C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc and open it in notepad. Then add a new line for each site you want to block with an IP address of 127.0.0.1.

I use that myself for blocking a couple of sites such as rotten.com which I don't want to open myself even by innocently clicking on a link. It's not practical for child-friendly filtering but might be useful for other posters here.

Creamy Goodness

hobie wrote:

Norton Internet Security now includes a 'Parental Control' facility ..... but not free :cool:

i wouldn't inflict damage on a pc even if it was free

Macros42 wrote:

I know this isn't what you're looking for but if you want to just restrict certain sites you can do that within Windows itself.

Find the HOSTS file in C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc and open it in notepad. Then add a new line for each site you want to block with an IP address of 127.0.0.1.

I use that myself for blocking a couple of sites such as rotten.com which I don't want to open myself even by innocently clicking on a link. It's not practical for child-friendly filtering but might be useful for other posters here.

that sounds good, there would a few sites, like you mentioned that, that would come in handy for.

do you know how to find ip addresses of certain sites?

FunkyChicken

Cremo wrote:

do you know how to find ip addresses of certain sites?

Go onto irc and just type "/dns www.boards.ie" etc.

Tom Dunne

Cremo wrote:

do you know how to find ip addresses of certain sites?

Fire up a command prompt (Start->run->cmd) and type NSLOOKUP sitename

I notice from the description it also blocks blashphemy. Hands up who thinks someone from the GWB brigrade wrote this software?

aidan_walsh

FunkyChicken wrote:

Go onto irc and just type "/dns www.boards.ie" etc.

Or from in Windows you can use ping.

Start -> Run -> cmd -> ping site

This will start with the line

pinging site [site_ip] with 32 bytes of data.

BTW, the hosts file also works with blocking domain names, so you don't need to explicitly use the IP.

aidan_walsh

hobie wrote:

You lost me there?

He means Norton is crap.

hobie

He means Norton is crap

ah so! .... ..... didn't know that

I'll go back and remove the suggestion straight away

CrowdedHouse

aidan_walsh wrote:

BTW, the hosts file also works with blocking domain names, so you don't need to explicitly use the IP.

My Hosts file just contains the following:

127.0.0.1 localhost


So if I want to block say 45.46,47.48

do I go

127.0.0.1 45.46.47.48

and/or

127.0.0.1 www.eircom.ie


or am I misunderstanding something ?


TIA

aidan_walsh

The host you want to block first, then the address to go to.

So it would be:
45.46.47.48 127.0.0.1
www.eircom.ie 127.0.0.1

Whats actually happening is that you are telling the computer that for any program that tries to access the first address, send it to the second instead.

CrowdedHouse

Ah now I understand

Thanks (cousin!)

Gandalf23

More info on hosts here