How can I block access to Facebook in Google Chrome?

Question

My daughter is addicted to this site, and this is having an adverse impact on her studies.

What methods are there to prevent her accessing Facebook in Google Chrome?

Kindly help

Solution 1

If talking to her fails...

I'm not sure how to do this specifically in Google Chrome. There might be an extension that can be installed that will block specified sites (which would obviously need to be password protected to prevent it being bypassed).

But if you were to block Chrome, what is stopping another browser being used?

You could block a specific website on the WHOLE PC by editing the Windows HOSTS file. You can then direct all requests to facebook.com to an alternative IP Address (eg. 127.0.0.1 - localhost - in other words nowhere!). Although depending how tech savvy your daughter is this can be changed back!

To block facebook.com (and other social networking sites) on your ENTIRE NETWORK you can change the DNS settings in your router to use an alternative, such as OpenDNS. If you then sign up to OpenDNS you can then block all sorts of websites by category. This is probably the most secure way if you are accessing the internet through a router as you can password protect the routers control panel to prevent changes to the DNS.

You might consider allowing access to facebook at certain times of the day (a healthy compromise?), which I think OpenDNS might allow you to do as well?

Solution 2

You can install BlockIt, which is a plugin designed for Chrome that allows you block certain domains.

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dfjfhdfdeogiplgepcbfjcpiianmeoed

Install it, create a password and then add Facebook to the list of domain names to block.

To unblock it, use your password to login to the BlockIt interface and allow it again.

You can also add a custom message that will appear whenever someone tries to access a blocked domain, maybe telling her to stop wasting her time on Facebook and get some homework done!

Comments

[Admin]

Not sure why this would be voted down? In a more general sense... there can be other valid reasons to block specific websites.

[Admin]

Maybe his daughter is voting him down.

[Admin]

communication is much more useful than a block action. probably all her friends are using Facebook, if you block it, she will be extremely unhappy.

[Benoit]

localhost is not nowhere… you could perfectly install a web server on your local machine, listening on port 80, and have every URL redirect to a static page saying Hi, Facebook has been suspended until you get a life back. (or a fake Facebook page telling account has been suspended because it was suspected to be a bot due to abnormally huge activity)

[the_midget_17]

@Benoit Well, if you block it one of the ways mentioned here (in w3d's answer), she could simply use a proxy and it would work for any of these methods. Plus if you block the DNS, she could simply add an entry for Facebook in the hosts file, circumventing the DNS block. I believe a good way would be to block it in the hosts file and denying her write-access to that file. You could add some proxy sites to the file as well, just to be safer.

[Benoit]

@the.midget: If the daughter has a non-admin Windows account, there is no way she might edit the hosts file.

[the_midget_17]

@Benoit Well, that's the way to go, then! Isn't it?

[MrWhite]

@Benoit localhost is nowhere on the public internet - that is what I meant.

[MrWhite]

@the.midget OpenDNS can also be configured to block proxy sites. And as Benoit says, assuming a non-admin Windows account...

[the_midget_17]

@w3d That's true, however, assuming a non-root account then I don't see why blocking through hosts file isn't easier and faster than having to configure OpenDND, given that you don't need the Internet to configure OpenDNS, just your computer and you're done.

[Jonas]

If I set access at certain times through my router (as suggested) the website IP address may be kept on Windows' or Chrome's DNS cache, giving access on non-authorized hours. How do I fix that?