Allow Specified Websites, All Browsers

Question

I'm trying to set up a laptop to give to contractors who work offsite, but I'm looking to restrict all websites except ones I let them view.

It runs Windows 7. Since it's for web developers who use all browsers it needs to be an overall rule for the whole computer.

Am I looking at some 3rd party software or can I do this with a firewall rule or something?

Answer 1

I don't think this is reliably possible. You really have no way to know what other web sites a given web site will need to connect to in order to operate. Modern web pages aren't just a single page served by a single server but are a complex network or Ajax connections and embedded requests to servers on various systems that are combined to produce the output you see.

You can ban specific sites, so long as they're not "nexus" sites like Google and Facebook. A large number of sites rely on connectivity to nexus sites to make their own functionality work.

Answer 2

You can try BitDefender 2012, it has parent mode which can help to manage rules.

Answer 3

In Windows 7 there is new firewall management interface: "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security"

• Open it!
• Make sure that all outgoing traffic not matching any rules is blocked. (That is not the default. See the top-level Overview page in the management interface.)
• Create whitelist rules for the allowed IPs/services for outgoing traffic.