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Close to Being Back
FreeFilteringYou haven’t heard much from me lately.
That’s not because nothing has been happening. It’s actually the opposite.
I’ve been completely consumed with rebuilding FreeFiltering from the ground up. And in the process, I neglected taking time to keep you updated. I’m sorry for that.
If it had been up to me, we never would have experienced any downtime. I truly tried to preserve the old system and take over the original codebase. But that wasn’t possible.
So here we are.
The silver lining is this: what we’re building now is going to be stronger, faster, and more flexible than what we had before. It’s taken longer than I expected because I underestimated how complex a global, profile-aware DNS filtering system really is.
About a month into the rebuild, I hit a wall. I spent weeks building something that looked right in development, only to discover it wouldn’t work properly in the real world. That experience made me very hesitant to talk about timelines. Every time I thought I was close, I’d uncover another layer of complexity.
But today, I finally have an update worth sharing.
Premium and Patron members who would like to help beta test can now use parts of the new system.
Here’s what is working right now:
You can create an unlimited number of filtering profiles.
For now, you should only filter using:
DoH through the “Secure DNS” setting in your browser, or
The iOS configuration profiles on your iPhone.
Please do not point your router at our servers yet.
You can enforce Safe Search on major search engines. If a search engine does not offer a safe mode, it will be blocked.
You can enforce YouTube Restricted Mode.
You can customize blocklists and allowlists by filtering profile.
Now for the important caveat.
At the moment, we only have a handful of domains in our “Adult” category. The category system itself is working. If you block a category, domains in that category will be blocked. But I have not yet populated the categories at scale.
My next major task is to pre-classify the world’s top one million most visited websites into the category system I’ve built. After that, I’ll implement an on-the-fly AI classification system so that unknown domains can be categorized in real time.
So we are not ready to protect your family yet.
Please do not:
Point your router’s primary and secondary DNS to our servers thinking your home Wi-Fi is fully protected.
Replace any filtering system that is currently working for you.
If you are tech-savvy and want to experiment with DoH or the iOS config profiles, I would genuinely appreciate your help. Feedback at this stage is incredibly valuable.
You can text me directly. I just found out today that my personal work number is finally approved for both sending and receiving messages. That was a small but encouraging milestone.
A quick word about the new infrastructure.
In the old system, you pointed your router to two fixed DNS servers. One in South Carolina as primary and one in Virginia as secondary.
The new system uses Anycast.
Most users will point their primary DNS to a single Anycast IP address. That IP automatically routes your traffic to the best server based on your location. We currently have servers in New York, Las Vegas, Miami, and Luxembourg.
For now, I also have a unicast server in Virginia that can serve as a secondary DNS for router setups in the future. Over time, I’ll add more geographic diversity and allow users to choose the best secondary server for their needs.
The foundation is now in place.
What remains is scaling classification, strengthening enforcement, and finishing the Anycast rollout so it’s fully production-ready.
Thank you for your financial support.
Thank you for your patience.
Thank you for your prayers.
This has not been easy, but I believe what we’re building will ultimately serve families better than what existed before.
If you’re a Premium or Patron member and want to help beta test, please reach out via text (link at the top of the website).
In Christ,
Michael Mason
Founder, FreeFiltering.org
