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A Free Kosher Internet Filter for UK Families

Whether you live in Stamford Hill, Golders Green, Manchester or Gateshead, the question comes up in almost every frum home sooner or later: how do we keep the internet in the house kosher without paying a monthly fee, or locking ourselves out of the things we actually need for school, work and parnassah?

ShomerDNS is one answer. It’s a free, non-commercial filtering service, run as a community kindness, and it works for UK families the same way it works anywhere else. Here’s what it does, how it compares to the options you may already have, and how to get started.

What “Kosher Internet” Usually Means in Practice

Every family and community draws its own lines, and those decisions belong with you and your Rav. But most families looking for a kosher filter want the same few things:

• Adult and immodest content blocked on every device, not just the children’s.
• Protection that can’t simply be switched off by a curious teenager.
• The essentials still working: school portals, banking, shopping, work email and the sites you rely on day to day.
• No ongoing cost, or at least nothing that adds up to hundreds of pounds a year across several devices.

The Options UK Families Usually Start With

Broadband family filters. Most UK broadband providers offer a free family filter you can turn on in your account. It’s a reasonable first step, but it was built for general audiences, not frum standards. It only covers devices on your home Wi-Fi, and a phone on mobile data or a friend’s Wi-Fi walks straight past it.

Filtering apps. Paid apps installed on each phone or laptop can be strict, but the cost multiplies with every device. Many of them also work by hiding content after it has already reached the device. We explain why that matters in Are Kosher Filtering Apps Making Your Phone Not Kosher?

The platforms’ own rules. The UK’s Online Safety Act requires platforms to protect children, but Ofcom’s own research found children’s exposure to harmful content hasn’t meaningfully dropped. We covered the findings in Ofcom’s Verdict. The law sets a floor for the platforms, but it can’t decide what comes into your home.

Going Further

Families who want a stricter setup can add more layers, all from ShomerDNS:

• Your own allow and block lists. With a personal VPN you get your own lists, so you can open up a site your child needs for school or shut one that slipped through. You edit them yourself in the browser.
• The ShomerDNS browser add-on for Chrome and Firefox hides images and videos by default, so a stray thumbnail doesn’t show even on a site you’ve allowed. It also blocks sites on the ShomerDNS filter list when the VPN isn’t connected.
• Frum Phone turns an Android phone into a locked-down device, with filtering and app installs held behind a PIN only a parent knows. It’s a good fit for a child’s first phone. See the Frum Phone page for details.

To be clear about the limits: DNS filtering works on whole sites and apps, not individual pages or videos inside a site you’ve allowed. No filter replaces an open conversation with your children about what they see online.

A Question for Your Rav

We’re not poskim, and nothing here is a psak halacha. Which sites and apps a family should allow, and how strict a filter needs to be, are questions to bring to your Rav. What we can offer is a free tool that does what you decide, on every device, without a monthly bill.