<p>HELP! My daughter asked me if I knew how to 'block facebook' since she thinks it too distracting. </p>
<p>Can anyone advise?</p>
<p>She could log off. She could announce that she’s off facebook until finals are over, etc.</p>
<p>thanks. I am completely ignorant of the workings of facebook. When you say logoff, do you mean, logoff from facebook, or from some other app? It sounds simple enough. </p>
<p>I also just found this. However, this solution might be too technical for my d…</p>
<p>[How</a> to block websites that kill your productivity.](<a href=“http://secretgeek.net/block_sites.asp]How”>How to block websites that kill your productivity. (secretGeek.net))</p>
<p>i dont understand. you want to close the account?</p>
<p>I suspect she is oftem tempted to sign on and waste away time. She’s probably looking for a way to block its use without deleting the account. Maybe she just lets you give her facebook a password that she does not know and cannot guess and then she can’t be distracted until she calls you to get the password!!! The only other way is for you to use a parental control on her computer–with her obvious permission.</p>
<p>yes, I believe she only wants to block it and not to completely delete it. she is away at college. she is asking me for tech help since I am the techie in the family. I am pretty sure she only wants to temporarily block it while she has tons of stuff to do.</p>
<p>she used firefox as her browser.</p>
<p>remember “trouble with tribbles”?</p>
<p>tribble saleman (laughing): “after all, tribbles have no teeth”</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Captain Kirk: Too much of anything, even love, can be bad.</p>
<p>[YouTube</a> - The Trouble with Tribbles Part 2](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sypPpBQMwY&feature=related]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sypPpBQMwY&feature=related)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, what she needs to learn is self control --but she knows that already. It is tough when you are first out on your own and have to police yourself. It’s good she recognises the problem. That is probably the first step.</p>
<p>is facebook like aol IM (a client app)? Does it have a settings or preferences? Is it something that starts up on windows startup or not?</p>
<p>No, you have to sign into facebook. If she has clicked the “remember me” then the best thing to do is to go to chat and turn status to offline, and then log out. Then, if you don’t sign back in then facebook is not on and you are not available. Then, next time she signs in, she should never check the remember me box, and should keep her status when on facebook in the offline chat status. Then, each time she goes to facebook she has to sign on. And if she leaves her chat status offline, no one knows when she is online and tries to chat.</p>
<p>Use AdBlock Plus. =]
It’s for Firefox… She can just download it and you can add Facebook to her block list. She can turn it on/off when she needs to.</p>
<p>leechblock firefox extension.
saved my grades this semester</p>
<p>A more subtle way is to block Facebook using the hosts file. Ideally, you would do this yourself, so that she doesn’t know how to do it. If she does, then she’ll just unblock it (trust me, willpower is no match for addiction) =). Here is a simple page showing how to do it in Windows: [How</a> to: Use the HOSTS file to block websites in Windows? - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net](<a href=“Log in | Overclock.net”>Log in | Overclock.net)</p>
<p>What operating system is your daughter running?</p>
<p>Oh, or just get her to let you change her password for the semester. Doh. Forgot to keep it simple.</p>
<p>I also agree with her allowing you to change the password.</p>
<p>Just edit the hosts file (/etc/hosts for Linux, %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts for Windows or /private/etc/hosts for Mac) and add the entry:
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
and you’re good to go.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>and email address so she can’t change the password back herself</p>
<p>yeah just edit the host file</p>
<p>It tells your computer that whenever someone tries to go to facebook.com that the computer can find it on your computer and since you aren’t facebook it just sends an error message back. When you want to undo it just delete the “127.0.0.1 facebook.com” line.</p>
<p>thanks for the suggestions. she is running vista home premium 64 bit.</p>
<p>I tried editing my hosts file on my machine (xp pro) as a test, and I found that the edit did not persist. I discovered that the attributes of the file and the etc folder was READ ONLY, so unset that setting, but my change did not take.</p>
<p>I’d rather not unset all folders in my windows folder since I do not want to upset the boot too much.</p>
<p>I believe I am the administrator.</p>
<p>I know firefox has an application that allows you to only spend a certain amount of time per day on a website.</p>
<p>If you use firefox, the meetimer application is rather useful as well. It logs all the time you spend at every url, so you can see how much of your time on the internet is spent procrastinating. It can also stop you from visiting the pages you categorize as “procrastination,” though its the same as what tedjn said about the hosts option, she can easily bypass it if she really wants to. But if she is trying to make a cognizant effort to cut down, than maybe a small roadblock is all she needs.</p>