How to Block Any Website On Your Windows Computers

There are several reasons why you might want to block certain websites on your computer. Some websites could be spreading viruses, contain explicit content or even be trying to steal your personal data. While you may well be more than capable of avoiding these websites, but that doesn’t stand true for everyone who uses your device. In such cases, it might be best to block certain websites. One of the backbones of the Internet is the DNS system that translates easily to remember (and type) names such as www.google.com into equivalent IP addresses (8.8.8.8). While you use DNS servers to get to websites, your computer also has something called a HOSTS file which can have this information stored locally. This can be used to disable access to unwanted websites. We checked this method with both Windows 7 and Windows 8.

How to Block Any Website On Your Windows Computers

  • Make sure you have administrator access on your computer.
  • Sign in to your PC using an administrator account and go to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\
  • Double-click the file named “hosts” and select Notepad from the list of programs to open the file. Click OK. The last two lines of your hosts file should read “# 127.0.0.1 localhost” and “# ::1 localhost“.
  • In case you can’t edit the file, you’ll need to right-click the file labelled hosts and select Properties. Click the Security tab, select the administrator account and click Edit.
  • In the pop-up, select the account again and check Full control. Click Apply > Yes. Now click OK in all pop-ups.
  • At the end of the file, you can add the addresses of websites to block. To do this, just add a line at the end of the file, with 127.0.0.1 and then the name of the site you want to block – this will redirect the site’s name to your local computer.
  • To block Google, for example, add “127.0.0.1 www.google.com” to the end of the file without the quote marks. You can block as many sites as you want this way, but remember you can only add one per line.
  • Repeat this step until you’ve added all websites you want to block.
  • Now close the hosts file and click Save.
  • Reboot your computer for the changes to take effect and you’ll find that all those websites are now blocked.

Also Read: How to Block Any Website On Your Android Phone Using Trend Micro

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