One of the advantages of having an active internet connection at all times is that you have access to information at your fingertips. All you have to do is use your PC or smartphone and open the website or app you want to use; It's so easy. However, there are many caveats with this privilege, such as unwanted threats from malicious sites.
That's why we offer various free web filters and paid web content monitoring apps. You may have heard of OpenDNS and SafeDNS. The services block potentially malicious sites on the internet and also provide parental control features to keep curious children in your home.
Today I am going to do a mini-review of the Virginia-based SafeDNS which provides web content filtering for home and business users. The service first arrived in 2010 and provided additional functionality over the following years.
SafeDNS Mini review
summary
SafeDNS Mini review
The reason I call it a SafeDNS Mini Review is because I haven't used it as widely as a web browser. Therefore, it would affect my opinion of this web filtering service.
Either way, you can use SafeDNS on your Windows 10 device by installing a dedicated agent app. The use of the SafeDNS agent is obvious; all you have to do is click a toggle button and the web filter will start to do its job. In addition, its small storage footprint takes up around 40MB of hard drive space.
In terms of visual appearance, the Windows app looks less modern than what we have today. But the interface is neat and clean, and I didn't encounter any issues while using the various features it offers.
Speaking of which, you can head over to the Settings section to change the various aspects of SafeDNS web content filter. For example, you will find different tabs in the content filtering settings such as categories, exceptions, aliases, and additional settings.
As the name suggests, the Categories tab allows you to select categories of web pages that you want to block on your device. Here you can block groups of websites that are known to spread malware, botnets, consume your bandwidth, and addicting social media sites.
Websites are blocked using a commonly known DNS filtering technique, where URLs are routed to SafeDNS servers and are blocked if their corresponding IP address falls into one of the blacklisted categories.
One problem you are facing is that you cannot find out which websites fall into a particular category. However, it will not be possible to verify all of them because SafeDNS's database contains over 100 million websites, he claims. SafeDNS provided a tool to check the category of individual websites, however.
Anyway, for all of the categories I selected, SafeDNS was able to block almost every site I know by name. Still, my expectations weren't that high.
If a particular website or domain is not blocked after selecting all categories, you can go to the Exceptions tab and add them to the blacklist. Also, you can whitelist websites to exclude them from any of the blocked categories.
Now when you go to the Additional Settings tab, you can check the box next to "Use whitelist only" to allow only whitelisted websites on your device. Here you can also enable options to force safe mode in search engines like Google and Bing.
Another useful feature of SafeDNS is that you can create profiles and save settings for different devices. The number of profiles you can create depends on the plan you are using. A security measure by default is that the Settings screen requires you to enter the SafeDNS password every time, but you can disable it in the common settings.
Here you can also choose the individual network that you want the SafeDNS Agent to block. For example, you can only block websites over WiFi or Ethernet.
SafeDNS web user interface
Many of these settings can also be changed through the web interface or the SafeDNS Dashboard which you can open in any browser using your login details. Here you will find that the web interface offers more options.
A handy feature of SafeDNS that you will find on the dashboard is the ability to create a custom block page, i.e. you can display a custom message or picture when a web page is blocked by the 'agent.
In addition, the dashboard displays detailed statistics of all your internet activity that it detects. You can view the individual URLs blocked by the agent or a pie chart for the web categories you visited.
Additionally, you can use the Dashboard to configure SafeDNS to work with static IP or VPN connection. I think a lot of these features could have been part of the local agent to make things easier. Overall, the dashboard seems to be more useful than the agent.
What's the bad part?
Of course, there are some things that I didn't like about SafeDNS, or I think they could be better. The most obvious of these is the visual appearance, which is not a deciding factor but can be improved. Here the web UI looks like it hasn't been updated in years. However, keeping the user interface low profile can be an attempt to avoid security holes.
One thing to note is that SafeDNS takes between 5-10 minutes to apply the changes made, such as activating or deactivating a new blacklist category. Indeed, the parameters must be synchronized with the SafeDNS servers. Time seems too long for our fast-paced world. So if you usually run out of time, sometimes using this web content filter can get bored.
Where to use SafeDNS?
While the most apparent SafeDNS application is in your home, where you want to protect your children from malicious web pages and inappropriate adult content on the web, there may be other use cases as well. For example, when you surf the free internet at Starbucks or use public WiFi at the airport, where users are more prone to visit malicious links.
In addition to the app, SafeDNS can also be configured on your router, which means it will protect and block websites on all devices on your local network. But at the same time, your devices will not be protected if you start using cellular data or other network.
The web filter can work on all major platforms including macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS. But unlike Windows, there is no dedicated application for them; you will need to configure it manually.
Final words
So that was my experience with the SafeDNS web content filtering service. Speaking of overall usage, I'd say it's on the safe side. While there are some things that need improvement, one of them is the speed at which settings are saved.
However, its effectiveness against limiting your children on the web remains a matter of discussion. As we speak, kids are becoming more technologically sound and they can quickly find workarounds. But again, that shouldn't be a deciding factor.
For individuals, SafeDNS is available at $ 19.95 / year, which is roughly less than $ 2 / month. For that price, you can access an unlimited number of devices on your home network, three profiles, add up to 50 sites to the blacklist and whitelist (each profile) and create three custom block pages.
