What FamilyProtect blocks, and why
FamilyProtect quietly blocks the risky sites your kids try to reach, sorts them into plain categories, and never confronts the child with a scary message. Your Blocked sites page groups everything into three levels: Serious (worth a conversation), Keep an eye on, and Filtered quietly. This page explains what each category means and, just as importantly, how to talk about what it finds.
What do the three levels mean?
Your Blocked sites page sorts every block into three groups so you see what matters first.
Serious means a site we think is worth a calm conversation: adult content, drugs, violence and weapons, security threats, hacking, extremism, or an unsafe download.
Keep an eye on covers sites that are not dangerous but are worth noticing: gambling, profanity, school cheating, unreliable information, deceptive ads, risky activities, and attempts to get around the filter.
Filtered quietly is the everyday background of ads, trackers, brand-new domains, and technical noise your child never even saw.
A low Serious count is a good sign, not an empty product. Most families see almost everything land in the quiet group, which is exactly what protection working properly looks like.
Every card, at a glance
Every block shows up as a plain card: whose device it was, what kind of site, and how many times. Jump straight to any one to see what it means and how to talk about it.
Serious (worth a conversation): Adult content · Drugs · Violence and weapons · Security threats · Unsafe download · Hacking · Extremism
Keep an eye on: Gambling · Deceptive ads · Questionable content · Filter-bypass attempt · Profanity · School cheating · Unreliable information · Risky activities
Adult content
This covers sexual content that is not appropriate for children. When a device tries to reach one of these sites, FamilyProtect blocks it before it loads. Seeing this category is common, and it does not mean your child went looking on purpose. Links, ads, and mistyped addresses all lead here. The point is not to accuse, it is to open a calm conversation about what they saw and how they felt.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to talking about adult content.
Drugs
Sites that promote or sell drugs, including vaping and alcohol aimed at young people, land in this category. A block here is a chance to ask what they were curious about, without judgement.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to talking about drugs and vaping.
Violence and weapons
Graphic violence, gore, and sites about weapons are grouped here. Children often reach these through games, videos, or dares rather than intent. Talking about what they saw helps them make sense of it.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to violence and weapons online.
Security threats
This is the one category that is about danger to the device, not content: malware, scams, phishing, and sites that quietly steal passwords. FamilyProtect blocks these on every protected device. If you see them, the protection did exactly its job.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to malware, scams, and phishing.
Unsafe download
Some blocks are labelled Unsafe download rather than a content category. These are game “executors” and cheat tools, plus the link-locker sites that hand them out. They matter because a child is usually asked to turn off their protection before installing one, and the file they get is often a password stealer rather than a cheat.
This sits in Serious for a reason. It is one of the most common ways malware reaches a child’s PC, and the child almost never realises what they installed.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to game executors and cheat tools.
Hacking
Sites offering hacking tools, account crackers, and “how to get into someone’s account” material. Curiosity about how things work is healthy. Tools built to break into other people’s accounts are not, and they often carry malware themselves.
Extremism, hate, and militancy
Content that promotes hatred of a group of people, glorifies extremist movements, or recruits. Children rarely go looking for this. They land on it through a video recommendation or a friend’s link, which is why a calm conversation matters more than a punishment.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to violence and extremism online.
Gambling
Betting sites, online casinos, and loot-style money games sit here.
Gambling is blocked every time, on every protected device. It sits under Keep an eye on rather than Serious because it is not in the same bracket as malware or adult content, not because it does not matter. It is worth talking about: these sites are designed to be hard to put down, and that is exactly why they are blocked for children.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to kids and online gambling.
Filter-bypass attempt
Sometimes a device tries to reach a public DNS resolver or a similar service that would route around filtering. FamilyProtect blocks it and labels it Filter-bypass attempt.
This is usually curiosity rather than defiance, and often a browser or app doing it automatically rather than the child at all. It is worth noticing, and worth a light conversation, but it is not evidence of bad intent.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to kids and web filters.
Questionable content
Some blocks land under Questionable content. It is a mixed group of the milder things worth noticing but not serious on their own: strong language, homework-cheating sites, unreliable sources, and pages pushing risky stunts. FamilyProtect blocks them and groups them here so they never crowd out the blocks that matter more.
A single block here is rarely worth acting on. A pattern is: the same kind of site turning up week after week is worth a gentle question.
Want the detail on one of these? The profanity, school cheating, unreliable information, and risky activities sections below each go deeper.
Profanity
Sites built around strong language and mature humour. Not dangerous, and not a category to react strongly to. Worth knowing about, because it is often the first sign a child is spending time in spaces aimed at adults.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to profanity and mature language.
School cheating
Essay mills, answer dumps, and services that sell finished homework. This one is a school conversation rather than a safety one, and it is usually about pressure and time rather than dishonesty.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to AI homework help and cheating.
Unreliable information
Sites with a track record of publishing false or heavily misleading claims. Blocking them is not about politics. It is about giving a child a cleaner information diet while they are still building the habit of asking who wrote this, and why.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to misinformation and fake news.
Deceptive ads
Fake download buttons, “you have won” pop-ups, and ads designed to trick a click. Children are the easiest audience for these, because the whole design depends on the reader not pausing.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to deceptive ads and scams aimed at kids.
Risky activities
A catch-all for sites encouraging behaviour that could get a child hurt, scammed, or into trouble. It is broad by design, and a single block here is rarely worth acting on. A pattern is.
Worried about this one? Read the full guide to risky online activities.
Why is so much “filtered quietly”?
Most of what FamilyProtect blocks is ads, trackers, and technical background noise. It is filtered silently, and your child never notices.
Two categories in this group surprise parents. Newly registered domains are websites created in the last few weeks. Most are harmless, but scams and malware use brand-new addresses precisely because no threat list has caught up with them yet, so we block them until they have a history. Parked domains are addresses nobody has built a site on. Neither is a sign your child did anything.
This is protection working the way it should, which is why we keep it out of your way instead of alarming you with it.
Talking to your kids is the most important protection
No filter replaces a parent. FamilyProtect exists to give you calm, specific openings for the conversations that actually keep kids safe. When you see a Serious block, you do not have to react in the moment. Try one of these instead:
- “I saw something got blocked on your laptop this week. You are not in trouble. Can we talk about what you were looking for?”
- “A lot of sites try to get kids to gamble or spend money. Have you seen anything like that?”
- “If something online ever makes you feel weird or scared, you can always tell me. I will not overreact.”
- “Some of what got blocked was there to trick you, not you doing anything wrong. Let’s look at how to spot those together.”
The goal is not to catch your child out. It is to make it normal to talk, so that when something matters, they come to you first.
Where to go next
New to FamilyProtect? Start with getting started. Want the technical detail of how blocking works? Read how DNS protection works on Windows. Questions about your plan are on the pricing page, and you can always reach us through the contact form.