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Forum Discussion
Blocked Sites
Hi all, Bit of a weird one for me. I have a number of keywords included in Block Sites on my RBR850. These seem to work fine, I get an alert every time they come up, which is good. Howeve...
You are correct. This is weird one. Site blocking can only function with regard to devices connected to the Orbi LAN. Devices out on the internet attempting to connect to some web site will be directed to that site IP, not to your home router.
I hope you are aware that the utility of site blocking on Netgear routers has diminished as web browsers have changed. The Orbi mechanism blocks only unencrypted (http) connections. It does not block encrypted (https) connections. Now that close to 100% of web sites are https, web browsers are starting to assume that any URL entered by the user that does not specifically indicate http is intended to https, and they search for the secured web site first. Thus bypassing the Orbi site blocking capability.
As an example, I set up a block for the keyword "ford" and set blocking to "Always".
Open a web browser and enter http://ford.com. Blocked by the Firewall message comes up immediately.
Enter https://ford.com, and the web site pops right up. Not blocked.
An interesting side note. site blocking takes place after the DNS lookup. My other site blocking entry is "sexykitten".
Search for http://sexykitten.com brings up a "site not found" response in the web browser. (why no one has created a web site called sexykitten is a mystery.)
Sorry to be no help. I cannot think of any explanation for how this sort of message could show up in the Orbi log file.