Switched to a local DNS filter after my kid clicked a fake ad - 40 blocked sites in one week

My 12 year old was looking up a school project last Tuesday and clicked one of those "your computer has a virus" ads that looks exactly like a real alert. I used to just tell her to be careful, but that time she actually got scared and called me over. So I set up a local DNS filter on our home router, the free version of one of those services. It took maybe 10 minutes to configure, just changed the DNS addresses in the router settings. After a week I checked the logs and it had blocked 40 different sites, most of them straight up scam pages or malware download links. I learned that these filters catch stuff that antivirus software misses because they stop you before you even reach the bad site. The downside is some social media links stop working until you whitelist them. Has anyone else tried setting up a family DNS filter and seen a big drop in weird popups or fake alerts?

3 comments

3 Comments

emery2901mo ago

Yep, I set that up too and it killed 95% of the weird popups on our family devices.

foster.jordan1mo ago

Does it mess with any of the streaming services though? My wife got real mad when I tried tweaking some settings and suddenly Netflix stopped loading properly on the kids' Kindle. I spent a whole afternoon trying to figure it out, turns out it was just the popup blocker being too aggressive. Ended up having to whitelist half the sites just to get cartoons to play again. Kinda makes you wonder if these blockers are more trouble than they're worth sometimes.

sean_green441mo agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, did you have to mess with the whitelist too? I had the exact same issue with Hulu on my daughter's tablet, drove me up the wall for a whole weekend... kept thinking it was the wifi. Turns out the blocker was flagging the video players as popups or something, had to add like ten different domains just to get Bluey to play again. It's a pain but honestly I still keep the blocker on because without it those tablets get flooded with weird adware and sketchy sites... gotta pick your battles I guess.