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Like a lot of others on here, we are educators that have been having a rash of students loading extensions in Chrome in order to run VPNs, games, etc. After standing on the shoulders of some much better scripters in JAMF Nation, we came up with the below deterrent. There is a never-ending list of extensions, so the question was really: "Do we want to limit their ability to load any extensions, or curb the behavior itself?" We went for 'curb the behavior'.



Most of this is based off of a couple of scripts I snagged here in the following discussion:
my link text



• First we got a list of offending extensions by scanning systems using @chriscollins script for reporting on installed Chrome extensions



• Once we had the nasty extension we wanted too target, we created Smart Groups with @emilykausalik script



• We then built a Restricted Software rules that killed the Chrome and Firefox processes if they were in one of the offending Smart Groups, and it displayed the following message "Your ability to use Google Chrome has been revoked because of a violation of the acceptable use policy." - (we killed Firefox too because the assumption is that the behavior will just jump browsers)



The end result being that the student is then stuck using only Safari to do their schoolwork (the principal has commented that he thinks this may be against the Geneva Convention 😉 ). If they wish to have the blocks on Chrome and Firefox undone they must seek Administrations help.



We simply reverse it by the users browser profile folder out of Application Support, running a new inventory and then finally a 'sudo jamf manage' all from a policy in Self Service only available to Admins.



The end result: Kids don't really like Safari, and it has way less handy extensions and can be managed more strictly with Parental Controls if need be, so we are targeting the behavior without limiting the 'good' extensions coming in.




  • One caveat: We have found that many of these Extensions are getting in when the student logs in to they personal gmail account and it comes over with their profile. So if they act surprised we let them know that is is their responsibility to check this stuff.

We also do the custom settings profile. There are just too many VPNs etc out there to deal with individually. However, we ran into another issue: there are a whole lot of Chrome variants out there that allow students to load extensions even with the profile in place. We started with Chrome Canary, then we went to Chromium, followed by Slimjet, and lately Vivaldi. So it's still a game of Whack-a-mole, but overall I think the list of apps that can use Chrome extensions is probably shorter than the list of extensions we don't want students running.


Hey all,
We were looking for an extension attribute that collects both the name of the chrome extension and the ID number to make whitelisting and blacklisting a one step process once we collect all these.



I'm not seeing one that does both here though.



Gabe Shackney
Princeton Public Schools


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