NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Orbi RBR50v2 not blocking sites in Keyword/Domain list
The Domain and Keyword block list DOES NOT block ANY HTTPS websites. This block only works for HTTP sites.
Only blocking HTTP(TCP80) , in the year 2022, is embarrassing as a security feature.
Please do better Netgear.
2 Replies
the problem is the https encrypts the url. So the router doesn't see it and so can't block it.
This has been posted about for years on the forums.
Blocking Sites not working - NETGEAR Communities
Thanks for posting that link. All this time I had assumed that the "Block Sites" feature worked by intercepting DNS queries rather than looking inside the TCP packets.
There was a conversation recently on the AX forum regarding site blocking:
The conversation focus was that new firmware wrecked the schedule part of site blocking. The person who started the thread insisted that he was able to block YouTube reliably and that the problem was that the schedule was now off by three hours. YouTube is one of those sites that switches automatically to https.
This leads to some awkward questions:
- If site blocking does not involve DNS and the router cannot "see inside" encrypted TLS connections, then how can the AX product block sites when the RBR50 cannot? or,
- Is the user simply incorrect when stating that his AX product can block sites which are clearly https?
