Limiting Access

[clarion]

I have three accounts on my PC - I am the administrator.  I would like to limit (not prevent) access to the net for two of the accounts (not mine, y'unnerstan), but I can't find a tool within Firefox that will allow me to do this.

Any advice?

[pcolbeck]

Two questions:

1) What operating system is this

2) Define restrict. Do you mean allow full access but only at certain times or do you mean only to specific web site sor only specific protocols eg Web bit no instant messaging or ftp ?

[Jaded]

If it was OSX Leopard, you'd set up Parental Controls.

[clarion]

1.  It's XP with Firefox as a browser

2.  Specific websites only, by preference.  The accountholders have abused their access agreements.

[pcolbeck]

So far as I know there isn't anything like that built into XP or Firefox (or IE for that matter). You would need to implement some kind of parental control software or either that XP machine or a proxy that they use to connect to the Internet.

[clarion]

Thanks.  Anybody got any suggestions of which software I should go for?

[Valiant]

If you're just blocking certain sites, you should be able to do it via the hosts file in each account.

Failing that, the longer way would be to disable access to the site via the router (most routers can do this) and re-enable them if and when needed.

[rogerzilla]

If they can't install software, just set the permissions for iexplore.exe (or firefox) so they can't run it.

[Woofage]

If you're just blocking certain sites, you should be able to do it via the hosts file in each account.

Do accounts have separate hosts files? If so, this would be my preferred method. Can you do:

127.0.0.1 *

or something similar?

[Adam]

If you're just blocking certain sites, you should be able to do it via the hosts file in each account.

Do accounts have separate hosts files? If so, this would be my preferred method. Can you do:

127.0.0.1 *

or something similar?

No, there's only 1 Hosts file, so putting the blocked web site addresses into that would restrict them for all users. 

If you've got the paid for version of Zone Alarm you can enable the Parental Controls, so that a password needs to be entered to access a wide range of categorised web sites eg  Religion, Shopping, Chat rooms etc etc.

There's quite a few other standalone software control programs.  Net Nanny seemed to get good reviews.

[Phil]

For a quick and dirty block, install an extension like Blocksite.  If your users have any technical ability though they'll quickly disable it.  To do it properly you'd need to block the site in your router or the hosts file - you could write a script that replaced the hosts file each time you logged on or off though. 

[pcolbeck]

If you setup either an IPcop or Smoothwall firewall on an old PC between you and the Internet you can use UrlFilter which is very flexible.