[support]

@casino The problems you are seeing may be caused by DNS caching in your browser. You can try closing the browser, wait for a few seconds, then restart the browser.

[support]

@casino Checking “Block VPN, Proxy and Tor” will block Vuze. This is not a port forwarding or NAT issue.

Basically, Vuze makes various connections to random hosts at random ports. When you check “Block VPN, Proxy and Tor”, these outbound connections are blocked. You need to move the device that runs Vuze to a profile that does not enable “Block VPN, Proxy and Tor”.

[support]

DNS does not block literal IP addresses because DNS server is not consulted when you already have the IP address. I.e., your computer only contacts the DNS server when it needs to get the IP address for a domain name. If the IP address is already known, the computer does not contact the DNS server.

[support]

I think P2P is blocked with the Proxy/VPN, TOR box, or the combination of that and “Literal IP”. Is it not? If you do need a certain VPN in a profile with such restrictions, you can white list the VPN server domain name or IP address in that profile. Or, if you need VPN on your device, put your device in a profile without such restrictions.

[support]

It’s a challenge to account for active usage at the router. More likely than not, you end up over counting usage and annoy the child, which might lead to disputes.

Our general advice is, instead of monitoring a child’s every move, parents should spend more time communicating and building trust. Technology can only play a secondary role. Our initial motivation for building this product was to make parental control less restrictive, not more. We wanted to build something parents love, but children don’t hate.

[support]

It’s a good thing to have if you can accurately account for the time spent on an app or site. However, this is hard to do on the router. Because the router only sees network traffic, it doesn’t know whether an app was actively used. The Facebook app has a lot of background activities, so tracking usage at the router can easily over count time spent.

An app on the smart phone itself, however, can see when Facebook is actively used.

[support]

“Custom DNS” allows you to override the system level DNS service provided by your ISP with something else, such as Google Public DNS, or Quad 9. If you have parental control disabled at the router level, this is the DNS service the router will use.

If you have parental control enabled, then the DNS service specified in the Profile will take precedence, i.e., the system level DNS will not be used. But there’s one exception: when a site is white listed, the system level DNS is used to resolve the domain name (instead of the profile DNS). Now, if the system level DNS is the same as the domain level, then whitelisting does not work.

[support]

As far as we know, these other sites, i.e., ebay.com, yippy.com etc., do not support safe search with DNS. Kibosh is probably the only site that claims that DNS based safe search is supported. Backpage.com was recently seized by the US DOJ.

[support]

@casino Make sure that you don’t have OpenDNS at the system level: go to the Internet Settings page and check that “Use custom DNS servers” is either unchecked or the DNS server used is a non-filtering DNS.

And, close your browser window, wait for a few seconds, then reopen it.

[support]

@Protection Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We’ve added an entry for safe search setup: How to setup Safe Search.

[support]

@casino Our team is looking into this. Will update in a couple of days.

[support]

@Casino Proxy sites fetch pages on the requestor’s behalf from their servers, then send the pages as if they come from the proxy sites themselves. To the router, there’s no difference between a proxy site that fetches content from other sites and a real site that serves content on its own.

Is there a reason OpenDNS does’t work for you?

[support]

Yahoo does not support safe search over HTTPS, so safe search only works for HTTP. You can disable Yahoo search over HTTPS by entering https://search.yahoo.com in the “Blocked URLs” box. Or, simply block all Yahoo search by entering search.yahoo.com. This does not affect other Yahoo services such as Yahoo mail or Yahoo finance.

[support]

Google video search should be covered by enabling “Safe Search” on the profile. Yahoo does not support safe search over HTTPS, so safe search only works for HTTP. You can disable Yahoo search over HTTPS by entering https://search.yahoo.com in the “Blocked URLs” box. Or, simply block all Yahoo search by entering search.yahoo.com. This does not affect other Yahoo services such as Yahoo mail or Yahoo finance.

[support]

The router relies on DNS services like OpenDNS to block proxy sites. When you check “Block Proxy” in access control, the router blocks HTTP requests sent through a proxy (i.e., when the user has set up to use a proxy server in their browser Connection option), which is a technique DNS services do not block.

As far as we know, the best protection against proxy sites is OpenDNS.

[Author]

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