CleanBrowsing is a DNS based web filter service that can protect against malicious websites and block explicit content.
As it uses it’s own DNS servers to filter websites, there is no additional software installation needed. All you’d need to do to enable CleanBrowsing is change the DNS servers . This can be done either on individual PCs or on home routers as needed.
There are 3 types of content filters provided by CleanBrowsing with the IP addresses of DNS servers as below :
Security : When this is enabled, only sites that are malicious are blocked. All other sites are allowed including those accessed by VPNs and proxy.
Adult : This is for blocking NSFW content, but it won’t block websites that are of mixed content like Reddit etc. Also, search engines like Bing, Google and YouTube are set to safe mode. This filter however doesn’t block VPN access or proxies.
Family : This is a broader filter that covers the previous filters. NSFW sites, sites with mixed and varied content as well as malicious sites are all blocked. Search engines are set to safe mode like the previous filter.
Also, VPNs and proxies are blocked with this option so it is a lot more strict filter than the other two.
Using CleanBrowsing :
In Windows :
Simply change the DNS server IP address depending on the filtering needed as described above. This example uses the most common Family filter with IP addresses 185.228.168.168 and 185.228.169.168
In Windows 10, right click on the network icon and choose Open Network & Internet settings.
Then click on Change adapter options.
Right click the adapter type and choose Properties.
Scroll to Internet Protocol Version 4 and select Properties (similar for IPv6 too).
From the General tab, change the DNS IP addresses as needed. Save the changes.
To see if this is working, you can open command prompt and try nslookup.
It should display the CleanBrowsing DNS servers as the ones in use.
Also, if family filter is used, you can try to access sites using proxy or VPN, they won’t load.
Also, sites with mixed content won’t open either.
Linux :
For Linux, the DNS server settings will be in /etc/resolv.conf file.
Open Terminal and using any text editor like nano or vi and add the CleanBrowsing DNS IPs to the list in lines that start with nameserver.
Save the changes.
All done.
Happy browsing.