How to Use Wild Cards When You Add Web Sites to Security Zones

When you add Web sites to the Restricted Sites or Trusted Sites zones in Internet Explorer, you can use an asterisk character (*, also known as a wild card, or a character that represents any other character) to include all transport protocols used by a specific Web address and all the domains in a specific domain.

To add a Web site to the Restricted Sites zone or Trusted Sites zone in Internet Explorer and use a wild card to include all transport protocols used by a specific Web address, use the following steps:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Internet.
2. Click the Security tab, click the Trusted Sites Zone or Restricted Sites Zone in the Zone box, and then click Add Sites (or Sites).
3. Type an asterisk in place of the appropriate transport protocol in the "Add this Web site to the zone" box. For example, you might type "*://www.microsoft.com" (without quotation marks).
4. Click OK, click OK, and then close Control Panel.

To add a Web site to the Restricted Sites zone or Trusted Sites zone in Internet Explorer and use a wild card to include all the domains in a specific domain, use the following steps:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, click Control Panel, and then double-click Internet.
2. Click the Security tab, click the Trusted Sites Zone or Restricted Sites Zone in the Zone box, and then click Add Sites.
3. Type an asterisk in place of the domain in a specific domain in the "Add this Web site to the zone" box. For example, you might type "http://*.microsoft.com" (without quotation marks).
4. Click OK, click OK, and then close Control Panel.

NOTE: These two methods can be combined. For example, if you want to include all transport protocols and domains in the microsoft.com domain, during step 3 listed earlier in this article, type the following line in the "Add this Web site to the zone" box: These are the only supported methods for using an asterisk as a wildcard character when you want to add Web sites to the Restricted Sites or Trusted Sites zones. For additional information about how to use security zones in Internet Explorer, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: