Source
r/linuxquestions•
cassisback

[tails] URL blocker, script, or workaround that lets me block urls with Tor without breaking anonymity

So, when I am working on my laptop I somtimes find myself reflexively typing in reddit or fivethirtyeight into the url box and distracting myself.

This happens often enough that it has a measurable impact on my productivy, so rather then spend mental resources constatly refocussing myself, is there a way to block my tor browser from accessing reddit and other potentialy distracting websites in a way that does not comprimise my anonymity?

I do remember reading that addons are fingerprints that can potentially used identify distinct users, which defeats the whole perpuse of using tor.

Any addon, script, or workaround is acceptible (as long as it does not break annonmytity), even if its a pain in the ass to set up (well, as long as it takes less then an hour to set up) because it will save a bunch of time and mental willpower throughout my workday.

I run the latest version of tails on a laptop.

Thanks in advance!

Posted May 8, 2017, 12:39 PM UTC · edited

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cassisbackOP•

so after posting in a bunch of places asking about blocking urls, it was reccomended that I edit the hosts file. So, I followed the instructions here:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/modify-manage-hosts-file-linux/

but its still not blocking reddit or any website I add in there.

Steps I follow, I open up the root terminal and run sudo nano /etc/hosts

then I paste in 127.0.0.1 reddit.com

click cntrl x, click y, click enter, and that should be it, right? But nothing seems to change. I can still acess reddit.

But the hosts file is definitly changed, when I go to look at it normally this is what it looks like:

127.0.0.1       localhost amnesia
::1             localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0         ip6-localnet
ff00::0         ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1         ip6-allnodes
ff02::2         ip6-allrouters
127.0.0.1 reddit.com

what am I doing wrong? ive tried varietions of reddit, www.reddit.com, https://www.reddit.com, all the permutations I could think of. Ive tried sticking the line in a bunch of different places in the document as well, and 0.0.0.0 instead of 127.0.0.1 , but nothing seems to work.

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

1
dundir•

Having multiple posts for the same thing usually turns off the help spigot for most people on here.

Your live environment will need to be set up so changes you make persist. This is not trivial. Most livecd's use squashfs to keep the size low. I would suggest reading up on that.

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cassisbackOP•

Having multiple posts for the same thing usually turns off the help spigot for most people on here.

thanks for the advice, still new to the community and linux in general. And yeah, ive spent most of the day reading into this and it seems like a nontrivial problem.

I dont care if I have to go through a process each time I boot up my computer, are you saying that in order for this to work period I will need to make the changes persist even after a reboot?

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dundir•

Changes will need to persist if you don't want to have to do it every time you boot up.

Fatigue will set in eventually and when it does mistakes happen. Automation is the simplest way to eliminate these type of mistakes.

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cassisbackOP•

Im ok with doing it every time I boot up so long as I can follow a checklist. I have a spreadsheet saved in the persistent drive with a checklist of stuff I need to do on my computer every morning.... but thats not really relevent.

I agree with you in principle though, automating it would be ideal. But for now Im just trying to get it to work on one instence, then I can try to figure out how to make it persist, if that makes any sense.

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