Allow and Disallow Apps Using CleanBrowsing
Every paid dashboard offers its user the ability to easily tune a network to a desired end state. What CleanBrowsing offers is a foundation to build the desired family friendly network.
CleanBrowsing, like most other networking tunes, may require some tuning. This is especially true when it comes to apps, what one customer finds acceptable is not always what another does. To help with this, we don’t dictate what apps can be allowed, but we do provide the tools to help enforce whatever rules a user finds appropriate.
Example: Allowing and Disallowing Discord
To help illustrate what we mean, let’s look at the Discord app. This is a very popular app used to communicate by a lot of people in the gaming industry, making it extremely popular amongst kids.
For most non-technical consumers, what you see as the face of the product is discord.com. This only scratches the surface of what is really happening every time the app is used on your network.
A CleanBrowsing user might think to whitelist: discord.com but find that they are unable to access, communicate or update the app. The reason is because of the various other forms of communication the app is making.
For instance, in the instance of Discord you would have to either allow, or disallow, the following domains to ensure the app continues to function as desired:
- discord.com
- discord.gg
- discord.media
- discordapp.com
- discordapp.net
The same is true for a number of other apps. Regardless of the app, you have the ability to use the Custom Allow feature in your dashboard to add every domain associated with any app:
The easiest way to find the domains associated with a specific app, or service, is to a) contact the developer of the app or service, or b) perform a basic Google search for “[app name] domains to block on dns”.
Some of the more common apps have already been resolved, and others will require a bit more work. You also have the ability to use the Activity dashboard in your account to isolate outbound requests, or contact us at support@cleanbrowsing.org for some help.
Other known examples include: