Looking for a white-list browser controller

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anonymous
  • Start date Start date
A

Anonymous

I'm searching for a freeware product that will allow the browser to
view ONLY the sites that I have listed on a white-list. All of the
software I've found so far have been payware. Any ideas would be
appreciated!
 
Anonymous said:
I'm searching for a freeware product that will allow the browser to view
ONLY the sites that I have listed on a white-list. All of the software
I've found so far have been payware. Any ideas would be appreciated!
Click to expand...

Can't think of a particular product off the top of my head, but you can
use the proxy server feature of any browser as a simple whitelist by
doing the following :

Set the proxy IP to a non existent/useless IP address.
Enter your whitelist sites into the "Exceptions" (IE) / "No Proxy For:"
(Firefox) settings.
Sites not in the whitelist will try to use the non existent proxy and
fail to load.

You could further extend this idea by setting the proxy IP to 127.0.0.1
and loading eDexter, a program designed to return a single image
regardless of the URL requested - usually used for blanking adverts via
the hosts file. Create a "Sorry, this site is not whitelisted" type
image, set it as a custom image and now every site not whitelisted will
display the images instead.

Hope this helps,

Ben
 
Set the proxy IP to a non existent/useless IP address.
Enter your whitelist sites into the "Exceptions" (IE) / "No Proxy For:"
(Firefox) settings.
Sites not in the whitelist will try to use the non existent proxy and fail to
load.
Click to expand...
Hope this helps,

Ben
Click to expand...

Hi Ben,

Thank you for answering. I'm going to try your proxy idea later today
but I need one more piece of data: What IP address would be
non-existent? Do you know of an IP that has never and/or will never be
used by anyone?
 
Anonymous said:
Thank you for answering. I'm going to try your proxy idea later today
but I need one more piece of data: What IP address would be
non-existent? Do you know of an IP that has never and/or will never be
used by anyone?
Click to expand...

I should have been more specific here - any IP which is not a proxy
server will work as it will not respond to the browsers requests.
Choosing a non existent one simply means that your PC will not be
bombarding some random computer with requests.

For example, if you have DSL and a router, your computer would probably
be allocated an IP like 192.168.0.2 - this is a private IP and will not
be routed over the internet. You could choose any other IP between
192.168.0.3 and 192.168.0.254 and it would technically not exist,
assuming you only have one PC at home.

Alternatively, I should have just suggested you set the proxy IP to
0.0.0.0 - definitely won't exist :) Just tested this on IE and it
accepts it as a valid IP but won't work for obvious reasons...

HTH

Ben
 
Anonymous said:
I'm searching for a freeware product that will allow the browser to
view ONLY the sites that I have listed on a white-list. All of the
software I've found so far have been payware. Any ideas would be
appreciated!
Click to expand...

Looks like you've got your answer already. Out of curiosity would this
also work?

In the hosts file, after your blacklisted sites, add whitelist sites,
with the right IP of course, then add *.* as a blacklist item. I'm
crossing my fingers hoping it looks for info in order top down, if so
this would presumably work. Not tried it.

NT
 
In the hosts file, after your blacklisted sites, add whitelist sites,
with the right IP of course, then add *.* as a blacklist item.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure wildcards aren't supported in the hosts file :(

Ben
 
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