Covenant Eyes partners with CleanBrowsing, a filtering company, to provide website blocking. This means that if a Covenant Eyes member, who is using our filter service, attempts to visit a pornographic website on any device, then CleanBrowsing will block the site.
-
-
- How do I turn the filter on?
- How much does the filter cost?
- Are there different filtering options?
- What is SafeSearch?
- What is the Custom Website List?
- What about social media?
- What about apps?
- How do I know the Filter is working?
- How do I change the Blocking Level?
- What about router-based filters?
- Related Reading
-
How do I turn the filter on?
If you are an Account Administrator, you can add filtering to yourself or any member on your account via our online member portal, My Account!
How much does the filter cost?
For most Covenant Eyes members, filtering is already included in your current plan! This means that you can use our filter at no extra cost.
Note: Longtime Covenant Eyes members may be on our legacy Personal Plan. This plan has a base rate and increases in price depending on the members and services you add. If you are on our Legacy Plan, adding filtering will cost $1.50 per member, each month.
Are there different filtering options?
There are two filtering options, called Blocking Levels:
Standard Blocking Level (default): Blocks access to all adult, pornographic, and explicit websites. It does not block proxy or VPN domains. Mixed-content sites (like Reddit) are allowed. Google and Bing are set to use SafeSearch.
Strong Blocking Level: Blocks everything Standard Blocking does, in addition to proxies, VPN domains, some mixed-content sites (like Reddit), and YouTube is set to restricted.
What is SafeSearch?
SafeSearch is a search engine’s optional, internal filtering feature that limits explicit search and image results. When the Covenant Eyes Filter is being used, it will automatically enable and enforce SafeSearch for popular search engines.
In My Account, you can select either the Standard Blocking Level or the Strong Blocking Level:
-
- Standard Blocking Level (default): enables and enforces SafeSearch for Google and Bing
- Strong Blocking Level: enables and enforces SafeSearch for Google, Bing, and Yahoo
What is the Custom Website List?
The Custom Website is a tool that helps you personalize your filter to meet your needs! Here’s how it works:
- To block a site that the filter is allowing you to access, enter the site and click the red “Block” button.
- To access a safe site that the filter is blocking, enter the site and click the green “Allow” button.
- After you add or remove a site to the Custom Website List, refresh the Covenant Eyes software on your devices to activate the change(s) you made.
- Some social media websites require more than one website/URL to be added to the Block List in order to be fully blocked.
- Any member can add a site to his/her own Block List. But only Filter Guardians can remove sites from the Block List.
Note: When you enter a site into the Custom Website List to be allowed or blocked, don’t add “www” or “https” to the beginning of each site.
Example: To block a website, enter the name of the site you want to block (1) into the Custom Website List form and (2) click the red “Block” button. A confirmation message will populate at the bottom of the screen notifying you that the change was successful and to refresh Covenant Eyes on your devices.
What about social media?
With a few exceptions, most social media will be accessible/allowed. With the Screen Accountability service, we’re able to capture and report any concerning screenshots that would result from time spent on a social media site or in a social media app.
If you want to block social media, each site may require adding a few extra URLs to the Block List in order to block properly.
Note for iPhone users: Covenant Eyes is only able to take screenshots within our app, therefore, activity in social media apps will not appear on the report. It is recommended that members with iPhones remove social media apps and instead browse through the Covenant Eyes app.
What about apps?
Our current focus is using CleanBrowsing’s expertise to block known pornography sites. CleanBrowsing will block access to pornography sites in our app or other apps. If the blocking doesn’t occur, for whatever reason, our Screen Accountability service is ready to capture and report concerning screenshots in those apps. If blocking apps is important in your situation, then you’ll want to read about using Apple’s built-in parental control feature, called Screen Time, for iPhone® or using our App Lock feature for Android™ devices.
How do I know the filter is working?
We’ve created a test page so you can test our filter without the risk of exposing yourself to explicit material. On any device running Covenant Eyes and signed in with a filtered username, go to www.covenanteyesfilter.com. If the filter is active and functioning properly, you’ll receive a Covenant Eyes block page (pictured below). If the filter is not active and not working properly, the page will redirect to the Covenant Eyes homepage. If you’re redirected to our homepage, please reach out to Member Care via chat, email or phone.
How do I change the Blocking Level?
The Filter Guardian can change the Blocking Level and filter settings. To change the Blocking Level, login at my.covenanteyes.com to access your filter settings, and then select the desired level.
What about router-based filters?
In some cases, router-based filters and the Covenant Eyes filter conflict. This conflict happens because the two filters are both trying to block content, based on their own settings, and they end up “fighting” each other. The result of this conflict is the user has trouble getting online or loading appropriate, normal pages. To resolve this conflict, use one filter and disable the other.