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Have something to say about SafeDNS? Say it here!
Have suggestions, comments, or need help? Post it here! If you know of better software than SafeDNS, post it here! If you know of issues with SafeDNS, post it here! Share your knowledge with all of us. :-)
As a mother of preteens and teens, I have been looking for a program that would prevent the sewers of porn and adult materials at the gate of my home i.e. at the modem level.
First of all, I must give credit to the employees who provide support to customers. They are very helpful and patient.
Setting SDNS was not a breeze, since most of us have dynamic dns and not static. For this, there is a great service called no-ip.com providing free static dns. Setting this up is very easy.
The SDNS support staff helped set up the service to prevent invasive porn and adult material, but unfortunately, the setup also stops many benign youtube videos and web sites.
Once SDNS comes up with a solution that filters out adult material and allows in benign ones, it is going to be the holy grail parents have been waiting for.
Would love to hear experience of other users.
drvajra
Q1: So, according to universal meanings of [ X ] and [ √ ] …
— is an [ X ] beside a selection meaning it’s blocked,
— and a [ √ ] mark means okay, this content is let through?
A1: Totally fails – I tested by setting “Content filter settings” to block “webmail” using both ambiguous settings of [ X ] and [ √ ] and yet I have absolutely no interrupted access to my Yahoo web mail either way.
__________Q2: And, how do we inspect and tweak filters, such that some dialog sites are allowed, like SOS, and some dialog hosts are filtered?
A2: Manually add site you like to a whitelist, but there’s no way to see and control the default blacklist.
Recommendation: It would be nice for it to import our bookmarks / favorites into it’s whitelist, and or offer to whitelist blocked sites when browsing.
And of course let us see and toggle items in the blacklist.
__________Report:
This is NOT a trustworthy program, probably mostly due to poor programming ( they have resolved their VirusTotal hit from the prior version, this version reports as clean ).
.[@drvajra] your goal is impossible to automate and have useful function otherwise.
For example, browse any web encyclopedia, dictionary, or the top few world renown professional credentialed news journalist organizations, and on all of them you will find neutral reporting of many things you might want your children to only have access to under careful chaperoning and contextual explanation from you.
Also, think “breast cancer awareness” and “breast reduction surgery for health”, which are probably valuable arenas for education and awareness, versus “big breasted women” porn sites, which may not necessarily be harmful, though brutally objectifying and titillating, so to speak — can you teach your children what objectification looks like, so they are prepared to recognize it and reject it immediately and vociferously?
I remember as a child walking down the street of a nearby town and passing an art gallery on the left that had paintings of naked women in the window, and my mom said “… eyes right …” as we passed.
Whatchya gonna do?
.Without [ BLOCKED ] [ NOT BLOCKED ] [ TEST ] controls for any selection, this SafeDNS v3 software is worse than useless, it is dangerous by creating a false impression that it is doing something when there is no way to know if it is or if it isn’t.
Maybe such confidence-building will arrive in v4.
.And worse, when I exited the program because I could not figure out what was [ BLOCKED ] and what was [ NOT BLOCKED ], it left me with NO CONNECTION TO THE INTERNET, it was unable to revert my connections to normal, leaving them redirected to non-existent 127.0.0.1.
Solution:
— right-click network icon in system tray
— select Open Network And Sharing Center
— double click on each connection in turn, I have wired and wireless
— select Properties
— select Internet Protocol v4 (TCP/IPv4)
— select Obtain DNS server automatically
— select OK, OK, Close… and you’ll be back on the web WITHOUT SafeDNS in the way.
Geesh.
I suppose the web is safe if it’s totally OFF!
=8^o
.
And take SafeDNS out of startup and services.
I use [ MSConfig ] to toggle off such invasions.
Otherwise it will return on next reboot.
.[@Peter Blaise] I want your opinion on Secure A Plus., I think it may have corrupted part of my hard-drive. Things get a little wonky and my Intel RST has stopped working. Some software here works well, but some and I know a comp after 14 years, and this stumps me. Nero sucks as well……..Regards.Rick.
Hi Peter Blaise
First, many thanks for your comments.
I believe one of the reasons that publishers offer free programs is to get feedback, so they could improve the programs. Your comments, I am sure, will be appreciated by the vendor.I have been using K9 Web protection, but it needs to be installed on all computers and devices. I wanted to stop the porn at the modem level, so any device connected will be secure.
I am also trying the free program HT_Parental Control offered here by Sharewareonsale. I haven’t yet tested its efficacy, especially in stopping porn sites, AND NOT BLOCKING safe sites.
I am not an expert on this program SDNS, but I was quite impressed by the amazing customer service they offer and their patience. When you encountered the problems, had you contacted them SafeDNS <[email protected]>, they may have given some help.
Re: your message Jun 14, 2019 at 8:06 am, after making any changes in filtering etc., it does not become effective right away. I was asked to go to CMD and type msconfig /flushdns. Sometimes doing this repeatedly even for 4 or 5 times, doesn’t seem to work nor waiting for 5 or so minutes. I found resetting the modem is the only way to make changes effective. But having to reset the modem for each change to test its efficacy is very time consuming and frustrating.
Re: your message Jun 14, 2019 at 11:32 am
Being a parent in today’s world is very difficult, especially to protect children from porn and adult material, at their tender age and rob their innocence. If we are searching for breast cancer, Google ought to classify the sites as educational. If there is video of a large breasted woman, which is of no educational value, Google must classify it as adult material. It is easier said than done, because I don’t think google or youtube care or share our pain. They just need to make money by hook or crook.
To temporarily disable SDNS, I was told to click on Settings ->Web Filtering-> and then on Suspend.
As a parent, I hope we can find a program that helps us to save our children at their tender age from watching porn. Your mom was right, but when a child by mistake types something and gets porn, it is far worse than glancing at pictures of naked ladies.
[@drvajra]
Regarding delay implementing SafeDNS choices, if I cannot even know if [ X ] or [ √ ] mean [ Blocked ] or [ Not Blocked ], and the screens are different for the local program versus the web front end, then the inordinate delay to have them effectively toggle only compounds the waste of time guessing what is going on.
Regarding Google classifying search results, that’s neither their promise nor their job, they simply respond with what others clicked on when asking your same search terms.
How is SafeDNS supposed to even find porn sites unless they visit them, and then Google has a record of that site being visited at least one more time, upping it’s popularity and ranking in web search results.
Perhaps writing to Google and asking them to collect MORE data on everyone ( yeah, that’s what we all want ! ) to classify who is searching, so that we can self-identify as [ I don’t like porn ] and then Google might be able to say “other people who don’t like porn clicked on these responses most, considering your search term”, and then the church that uses porn as a front door to try to convert porn viewers ( yup, I wrote to them, and they said they do it because it works ! ) will have access to our children much easier.
In other words, we may be expecting someone else to do the work of raising our children for us … and we somehow expect an imperfect, evolving, cat-and-mouse commercial algorithm to raise our kids, no less!
I’m not saying it’s easy, nor am I saying anyone is irresponsible, and I do appreciate that we all can become frustrated and perhaps at risk of becoming impatient, considering the challenge of wanting to raise connected and intelligent and savvy kids who can thrive in a competitive marketplace, yet who are at the mercy of untoward influences.
I hope everyone notices the arduous efforts we are all employing trying to get these chaperoning programs to work for us, when the same effort would probably be better put to chaperoning our kids, engaging with them, sharing their shock and curiosity when encountering crapola on the web, and not just abusive porn and the presidents who pay off porn stars to keep quiet when people are voting, but outright lies and propaganda from people in power and their cronies and corporations, religious indoctrination not just from nefarious cults, but from seemingly good people who just happen to be of a different religion from our preferences for influencing our family, as our kids are exploring ways to understand it, put it in perspective, and so, we definitely need to have more off-web experiences with our children that informs and contextualizes, that is, if the web is engaging our kids, then we have to engage our kids even more.
In other words, go ahead and engage all of these time and money eaters, but remember to spend even more time and maybe money on other ways to make sure our kids are loving, respectful, aware, and protective of themselves, of each other, and of everyone’s value,
… and not just with porn filters,
… but especially empowered with the skill to deconstruct propaganda.
Good luck, and thanks for sharing.
.[@Riuck]
I have used every anti virus and anti malware program since the original Central Point PCTools, and Peter Norton bought his anti virus program to compete, from the earliest inventions of Avira, F-Prot, Dr Solomon, and so on, from the 1980s on, including SecureAPlus ( which I found entertaining, but arduous to interpret and test and confirm it’s results ).
2 things:
— I find them all slowing down my computer responsiveness intolerably, and interfering with my control of my own computer, and causing, as you have noticed, misbehavior of my own computer,
— I have become a savvy SELF-PROTECTIVE user, and always submit downloaded programs to VirusTotal, and then making educated decisions, before running them or dumping them in a [ – Malware ] test directory to challenge the next anti virus offering, and I backup and distribute my resources to I am not totally vulnerable from any computer failure regardless of attack, and I do not engage in dialogs asking me to turn over responsibility for any of my resources, see below.
I do not use nor recommend ANY anti virus anti malware program to be running all the time, but reluctantly install FREE Microsoft Security Essentials and FREE Windows Defender ( depending on the operating system ) for people who need to SEE something protecting them, at least Microsoft’s products are competitively designed and test well in reviews, and integrates well into the operating system experience without causing unusual screen pop ups and behaviors that compete or contradict their usual Microsoft interface expectations.
I routinely run FREE Malwarebytes ADWCleaner to fix customer ( and occasional my own ) messed up computer, as it can also reset the network / Internet connections and Chrome’s defaults ( but I manually un-check IObit and Auslogics programs which Malwarebytes has a hair up their arse over ).
But, no matter how many locks I try to put on the front door of a customer’s computer, invariably, they themselves open the door and invite a spear phisher in, and voluntarily if unwittingly turn over their computer, their credit cards, their bank account, and more, in spite of my rule that I have drilled into them, that I have had them repeat to me daily, on or off the computer:
— Never execute a transaction that you did not initiate.
__________Regarding hard drive performance, we forget that Microsoft offers us FREE [ ChkDsk C: /r ] to scan and repair surface defects ( keep the drive cool, I use supplemental cooling fans, never letting a drive exceed 99 degrees F ), and there are great NOT FREE drive repair programs from Steve Gibson’s Spinrite and Dmitriy Primochenko’s HDDreg, plus, NOT FREE replacement hard drives are CHEAP.
Also, I myself forget that it’s easy to reinstall Windows 7, and with free Ninite and other multi-program installers, within two days, have a clean and new system once again, but no, instead I waste weeks struggling with a system that I could simply reinstall fresh:
— Nothing beets a new installation.
Tell us more about your challenges and victories, good luck, and thanks for sharing.
.[@drvajra] Hello drvajra, SafeDNS filters the internet at the DNS layer. It means that a site can either be altogether allowed or blocked in its entirety. DNS filtering solutions are incapable of blocking specific web pages, but just entire sites and categories of content, like ‘Pornography & Sexuality’, ‘Virus Propagation’, etc.
SafeDNS has its own web categorization database with 105M sites distributed in 60 content categories. All of the SafeDNS filtering solutions are based on this database and its information. With it, each user DNS request from a SafeDNS protected device or network is analyzed from the point of view of what site is requested. If the user request a site from user allowed content categories, then such a DNS request is successfully resolved into the IP address of the requested site. Otherwise, the user sees a service block page, instead of the requested site (from user blocked content categories).
