Cool way of blocking websites without a Firewall...

Polonious

Just though I'd share this. It's a great way of only allowing access to certain websites in IE using the contents feature. Very clever stuff...

Creating The Content File
1. Go to Start -> Run and type 'NOTEPAD Z:\DEFAULT.RAT'
2. Create the file and paste the following into it. Then save it.

((PICS-version 1.0)
(rating-system "")
(rating-service "")
(name "Default")
(description "")
(category
(transmit-as "")
(name "All Sites Restricted")
))



Configuring Internet Explorer
1. In Internet Explorer, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Content -> Settings.
2. Uncheck 'Users can see sites that have no rating'.
3. Click 'Change Password' and enter a password.
4. (Optional) Uncheck 'Supervisor can type a password....' if you do not wish to be able to bypass the blocked web pages with the password you just set.
5. Click 'Rating Systems' and remove any existing entries.
6. Add Z:\DEFAULT.RAT and Click 'OK'.
7. Click OK to exit.



Allow Certain Sites (IE Versions 5.5 and Later)
1. In Internet Explorer, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> Content -> Settings.
2. Click on 'Approved Sites'
3. Enter a site to allow access to. Wildcards are permitted. For example:

Type '*.novell.com' to allow access to novell sites.
Type '*.edu' to access sites with an educational classification

ColmOT [MSFT]

That only blocks websites...doesn't lock down your PC Like a firewall....you're still open to virii & worms.

Capt'n Midnight

In fairness - most firewalls won't help at all if you click on something nasty on a dodgy site.

Defense in depth - you need firewall, AV , Spybot , AnalogX proxy thingy(scripts) , Patches , alternative browser* , sharing disabled , password enabled too.
Probably would not hurt to turn off autorun / VB scripting etc. etc. Blocking sites won't hurt either. And disabling all those unneeded services/messangers

You can also use things like FASTNET or simple routing to block off return routes to reserved IP addresses. Somewhere out there is a list of IP ranges used by US BB home users - OK you might loose a few small sites - but you should loose some zombies too.

*if/when IE gets hijacked or there are know exploits for fully patched versions , you should have firefox or mozilla browser as a backup to download the IE/OS fixes/patches.

Shad0r

yeah mozilla firefox seems to be teh win.