How does the Safe Surfer DNS work?
To provide you with a clean online surf experience, Safe Surfer takes advantage of Domain Name System (DNS), a computer technology that allows you to surf the web. All devices that use Safe Surfer talk with our DNS servers, as opposed to the default servers automatically assigned to you by your Internet service provider.
Since its emergence in the early 1980s, DNS has become a core part of how the Internet works. DNS can be thought of as the "contacts list" of the Internet. When you vist a website, like https://safesurfer.io, your search engine doesn't really know where that is actually located on the Internet. To find this information, your web browser asks your device to talk to a DNS server so that it can serve you the content you requested.
There are a few things that we can achieve for you when using this technology:
Any time a device is talking with Safe Surfer, it cannot reach porn sites. We block millions of pornographic domains—these comprise of websites and servers belonging to hundreds of thousands of porn sites. Due to how DNS works, we can provide you with a live database. This means that we can block new porn sites for you automatically.
Our machine learning engine analyses new worldwide domain traffic in an anonymised, privacy-preserving manner to discover new threats so that we can keep you safe.
When new platforms and services arise, such as a new social media app, we can provide new blocking options almost instantaneously.
If you use our encrypted DNS (available on Android, Apple, and Windows 11 devices), we can encrypt your domain traffic between you and us. This minimises snooping risks with regard to cybersecurity. The new encrypted DNS technologies are called DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT).
To get started with using Safe Surfer, check out our getting started article.
Background
Since its emergence in the early 1980s, DNS has become a core part of how the Internet works. DNS can be thought of as the "contacts list" of the Internet. When you vist a website, like https://safesurfer.io, your search engine doesn't really know where that is actually located on the Internet. To find this information, your web browser asks your device to talk to a DNS server so that it can serve you the content you requested.
There are a few things that we can achieve for you when using this technology:
Any time a device is talking with Safe Surfer, it cannot reach porn sites. We block millions of pornographic domains—these comprise of websites and servers belonging to hundreds of thousands of porn sites. Due to how DNS works, we can provide you with a live database. This means that we can block new porn sites for you automatically.
Our machine learning engine analyses new worldwide domain traffic in an anonymised, privacy-preserving manner to discover new threats so that we can keep you safe.
When new platforms and services arise, such as a new social media app, we can provide new blocking options almost instantaneously.
If you use our encrypted DNS (available on Android, Apple, and Windows 11 devices), we can encrypt your domain traffic between you and us. This minimises snooping risks with regard to cybersecurity. The new encrypted DNS technologies are called DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT).
Let's start
To get started with using Safe Surfer, check out our getting started article.
Updated on: 13/01/2024
Thank you!