Safest, Simplest Site Blocker Extension for Google Chrome?

October 1, 2024 9:31 AM

I need approval from work IT to install any extension, so I want to find the safest, simplest site blocker to block me from distracting websites.

Ideally I could block top-level domains without blocking sub-domains necessarily, but it is more important that it is very safe. We don't have an ad blocker extension installed so I can't do it through that. I don't have access to a lot of Chrome admin stuff so I probably can't do it through that either. I was able to block JavaScript and images on particular pages though chrome://settings/content/all, but not the whole site.

posted by catquas to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

If you're on a Windows machine, there's a file here:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Which overrides the 'location' on the internet where a website lives. If you can edit it directly -- or another trick is to make a copy on your desktop, edit it, then paste the file into that folder, overwriting the old one -- you can add something like :

127.0.0.1 facebook.com

Which tells your browser "Hey, my own computer is the server for facebook.com, don't ask the internet about it, I'm right here!" which will then fail because I don't think you're working on Facebook's servers.

Your IT may frown on this if they catch you, and some IT use the hosts file to handle their own routing so they may periodically overwrite your changes. The default hosts file is just a bunch of lines starting with #; if there's any other lines in there that look like the facebook line above, your IT is using the hosts file for their own purpose.

But, it's a pretty bulletproof way of blocking things, your computer literally cannot talk to the website. You should technically be able to play with which subdomains are allowed.

For an example -- here's a premade hosts file designed to block ads.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:45 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

(hosts file would work great- here's a good UI for it- but if you don't have IT permission to install browser extensions you probably don't have the requisite Administrator rights to update the hosts file either)
posted by BungaDunga at 10:08 AM on October 1 [2 favorites]

I have used and liked leechblock in the past.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:25 AM on October 1

Can you ask IT?
posted by samthemander at 11:43 AM on October 1

Response by poster: Yes I don't have access to edit the hosts file. Right now there are not any approved site blocking extensions on the approved software list, so I think I would have to propose an extension rather than ask what a good extension would be.
posted by catquas at 7:41 AM on October 2