Porn sites sneaking though; how to block sites that I don't know about?

[abe]

Hi. We’ve been using the PCwrt successfully for over a year now and in general it’s worked well for us! We installed a new app on our phones called ScreenTime, to better control app usage for our kids. One of the features of the app is that it shows me sites the kids visit. So we discovered that they were reaching a couple porn sites. One is blatant, “damplips”. The other was more discrete, it was an animated gif type of site that is versitile and full of both porn and no porn stuff. But the search terms being used to find those pages were distinctly porn related, such as blowjob, etc.

So I blacklisted the sites, had a conversation with the offending child, etc. But, the question is, is PCwrt supposed to block those sites? Obviously it would be impossible for me to come up with a list of sites that I need to blacklist, and, would put me in a position of searching/viewing thing that I don’t want to either.

What do I need to do next? Thanks!

[support]

Most porn sites should already be blocked by OpenDNS, the “damplips” site included. There is possibility that some obscure porn site might sneak through OpenDNS. Enabling safe search will stop them from finding links to those sites. For example, the “damplips’ site will not come up in search results when safe search is enabled. But make sure you block search.yahoo.com, since it no longer supports safe search when it was switched over to HTTPS. Bing and Google should be OK.

If you find porn sites not blocked by OpenDNS, enter it in your router’s black list. Then check the site status at https://community.opendns.com/domaintagging/. Enter the domain name in the “Check a domain” box and click Go. If the site is blocked by OpenDNS but still visible on your home network, then you need to check the DNS server settings in the parental control profiles.

[support]

To be safe, you need to block all search engines that don’t support safe search. If you use OpenDNS Home, you can log in your OpenDNS account and check the box to block search engines. Then white list google.com and bing.com on the router. If you use duckduckgo, white list safe.duckduckgo.com.

If you use OpenDNS Family Shield, then consider black list these sites:

• ask.com
• dogpile.com
• duckduckgo.com
• excite.com
• gigablast.com
• lycos.com
• qwant.com
• search.yahoo.com
• yandex.com
• yippy.com

Again, if you want to use duckduckgo, then white list safe.duckduckgo.com.

[abe]

Hi. I took the steps above but continued to have problems as I tested it. Now, I seem to have figured out one problem, that might be above and beyond this other stuff. While I had OpenDNS Family Shield selected under Parental Controls, Profiles, Default… I had done that correctly, right?

But under each individual profile, it said “System Default”. Well, I figured that meant it was going to mirror the Default Profile. But I guess it wasn’t? So,now under each profile, I selected OpenDNS Family Shield and it is working. (I am using internetbadguys.com to test access.)

So, is that a bug in the software, or did I misunderstand the meaning of “system default” in my settings?
Thanks!

[support]

There’s no filtering for the System Default DNS provider. Making this selection means that you are using the DNS servers provided by your ISP, i.e., the DNS server with IP addresses you see in the Status page Internet section. For a profile to be filtered, you need to select OpenDNS for that profile.

The purpose for the ability to use different DNS services for different profiles is so that parents are not restricted by the same rules they put in place for children. It might happen that OpenDNS blocked some legitimate web site by mistake. Parents can then use the unrestricted profile to visit the site and confirm that there’s no harm.

[abe]

Thanks, my confusion then is that “System Default” refers to what the ISP provides for the search, rather than referring to the “Default Profile” search! That makes sense.

I never discovered any limitation because I had set the adult accounts to use Google, and just assumed everything was working.
It’s fixed now. Thank you.

[bellabell]

I use Content Restrictions on the iPhone and Anti-Porn Pro on Google to block porn sites, which are free methods. K9 and OpenDNS seem to be good too.

[Casino]

OpenDNS is not that good. It has too much holes! You can read here:

DNS Porn Filters Compared

CleanBrowsing is the best, i’m using it right now, it’s much better than OpenDNS.

CleanBrowsing Family Filter:

IPv4 address: 185.228.168.168 and 185.228.169.168

IPv6 address: 2a0d:2a00:1:: and 2a0d:2a00:2::

P.S. For the pcwrt staff i can report you that Norton ConnectSafe doesn’t exist anymore. The service has been closed, those DNS doesn’t work anymore, you can check this news on internet. I think you can delete them from the DNS list.

[support]

@casino Thanks for your feedback!

[Author]

Posts