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Preventing browser access to TikTok on Windows Devices

By Chuck Brown posted Thu March 23, 2023 04:10 PM

  

We have previously discussed in a blog on the security community what MaaS360 can do to remove TikTok from devices and prevent its usage, but that centered on the TikTok application.

But how can we prevent a person from accessing www.tiktok.com on a Windows device using any browser?

Individual browser blocklist configuration values or registry entries can prevent access but that’s a lot of work.  We can’t even depend on those configuration variables because someone may have a different browser that we may not have known about.

We need to look at blocking at a macro level.

A straightforward way to make this happens is to update the host file on your Windows machine.

Process

Here are the steps:

1.       Open NotePad as an Administrator

2.       Open File Explorer

3.       go to: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

4.       Edit the host file using Notepad

5.       Add 2 lines at the bottom of the file:

a.        127.0.0.1  www.tiktok.com

b.        127.0.0.1  tiktok.com

6.       Replace the host file

The TikTok URL will no long be accessible from a Windows based Browser



Example host file

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.

#

# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.

#

# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each

# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should

# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.

# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one

# space.

#

# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual

# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.

#

# For example:

#

#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server

#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.

#             127.0.0.1       localhost

#             ::1                 localhost

127.0.0.1  tiktok.com

127.0.0.1  www.tiktok.com

Results

Firefox




Chrome



Edge


You can always use MaaS360 to push this file out from the Application Catalog.

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