Update: This product review was written when the Clean Router product was called "Pandora's Hope". Some information here reflects the old name.
Why we want protection from pornography
Protecting my family, those in my home, and even myself from the destructive influences of pornography is a high priority for us. The damage pornography inflicts on those involved in its production those who consume it have been well-documented, even by those without the specific agenda of fighting it for moral reasons, such as sociologists and psychologists. Increased pornography consumption continues to be associated with increases in unhealthy anger and tension, abuse, and other forms of violence.
For us, the trump card has been a desire to follow Jesus. His instructions on marital fidelity and purity are compelling and challenging. While he taught that the root of our sin is our hearts, and my experience indicates he was correct, our hearts are influenced by our surroundings and the things that we consume. Thus, protecting our hearts from damaging influences is one way to care for our inner lives. By doing so we are not only caring for ourselves, but for our friends, our spouses and children (current or future), and ultimately everyone with whom we interact.
It is for this reason that I am on a constant quest to find the most effective, most helpful means to keep pornography out of my life altogether. For several years, Michaela and I have wished we could find a solution that blocks at the source; that is, we have wanted something that will keep the internet-based content we want out of our home, well, out of our home. We have used software-based solutions to that end such as X3 Watch, and, for the last several years, Safe Eyes, but have had a number of problems. X3 Watch doesn't actually prevent anyone from doing anything - it merely reports it. Safe Eyes is effective and helpful, but has circular problems logging onto wifi networks other than your home network, and is rather expensive at over $50 per year. Filtered browsers on smartphones are nice, but do nothing to filter other apps that offer internet access.
What is Pandora's Hope?
Enter Pandora's Hope (cleanrouter.com): a wireless router that offers self-updating filtering software designed to block pornography (and any number of other fully customizable categories) at the source, complete with much less expensive subscription fees than Safe Eyes and other comparable software-based tools. The name itself is a reference to the Greek mythological story of Pandora, who was given a "box" or jar, and unknowingly unleashed all the evils in the world. The router, being named "Pandora's Hope", alludes to the internet being something which, while helpful, has given us far more than we wanted, and thus the router becomes a piece of the solution, a "hope" for Pandora.
Any device using the wireless network is filtered, with any internet access request. This means that, unlike Safe Eyes or filtering browsers on smartphones, any app or internet use is filtered. When you click a link in a Facebook mobile app, or a Twitter app, these things are all filtered by the router. Every single request for web-based information is filtered.
So far, we've had a great experience with it. My previous router was a 1-year-old Cisco N-Router with great speed, but the Pandora's Hope Pro router (yes, I bought the pro version, thinking it to be more future-resistant) actually beat my Cisco router in speed tests. I was very happy with this, since Safe Eyes is known to somewhat slow down your internet speeds. Knowing I wasn't sacrificing internet speed to have this router was a pleasant surprise.
Setup was easy. I had it fully installed and running within 15 minutes of receiving the package in the mail. Shipping was extremely fast; it was at my house two days after I ordered it, and it ships from Arizona. We customized our settings rather easily, and have only had to go into the settings once in two weeks to change anything. This knocks the pants off of Safe Eyes, which seemingly had to be disabled every couple days in order to use some basic feature that my best efforts couldn't figure out how to stop it from blocking. I like to think I'm not stupid, but I couldn't get Safe Eyes to block only what I wanted it to block.
Here's the basic rundown of Pros and Cons for Pandora's Hope:
Pros
Cost: The initial cost is more than a comparable non-filtering router, but it's a great router for the money. The subscription fee of $20 per year is less than half the price of what we had used before, and at this point, it's thoroughly outperforming Safe Eyes, both in speed and in blocking what we want while allowing what we want. I went with the pro version, expecting that the future will bring higher internet speeds and more intern-using devices to our home, but the base version is no slouch. The fact that we have a couple computers, a couple smartphones, and often host staff meetings for our Cru staff team (which adds about a dozen other smartphones) made us go for the pro version. Still, this will pay for itself in a handful of years with the savings from not using Safe Eyes anymore.
Filtering: It's doing great. It's blocked expected things (it filtered an article about child sex trafficking) but other than that, it has allowed everything I wanted to see. There's the option to blacklist, graylist, and whitelist any site. Blacklisting a site blocks every request for anything hosted on that site, graylist filters the site by content, allowing appropriate content while filtering for the categories you ask the router to block, and whitelisting allows all content on that site regardless of flagged content. I have whitelisted, for example, the Gospel Coalition blogs, which may contain keywords such as "pornography" that the router would otherwise block, but obviously (if you're familiar with the site) is speaking about them in an appropriate way. It should be noted that we whitelisted some of our "usual suspects" from Safe Eyes - iTunes store, Netflix, etc. Others with internet-using children (I don't have those yet) who let them use Netflix may have issues with this. There's even a dial you can use to simplify the filtering - sliding to the left makes it filter less strictly, and to the right filters more strictly with pre-fabbed settings. It also features the possibility to send daily reports of activity to as many people as you want (although these reports, we have found, are very thorough 12-page PDF attachments, which may discourage the recipients from actually viewing them).
Setup: You can set this up in less than 30 minutes. Yes, even you. It was a breeze, and works mostly like any other router setup. Make sure to uninstall any existing filtering software you may have (such as Safe Eyes) before you begin, however. It might mess with the setup. We uninstalled Safe Eyes immediately before we installed the router.
Self-updating: The router continues to update its filtering software with time, and includes a 6-month filter subscription with the purchase price. This means that for $20 per year, you get constant updates protecting you from the ever-increasing database of the multi-billion dollar porn industry, as well as virus and other harmful software blocking as well.
General use: This is, perhaps, the most important thing, and it has blown everything else I've used before out of the water, including beating my previous (really nice) router on wireless speed pretty significantly. We've only had to add some iTunes store settings after about a week, but other than that, I can basically forget that I have this router. It's running like you'd want a router to run, while not overblocking the things that it shouldn't.
Cons
Setup: Yes, I know I put setup in my pros too, and it belongs there, but let me explain. It took my two whole stinking hours to get my wireless printer working on this network. I shouldn't really put this here, because this is completely the fault of my Samsung wireless printer and has nothing to do with this router in particular (I would have had this problem if I had merely changed the network name and/or password and kept my current router), but setup of other devices that link to your wifi, such as smart TVs or video game consoles, may cause trouble. If nothing else, it's something to be aware of when considering this product. There is an easy way around this: the router has the option to ignore certain devices by IP address, so in order to prevent any printing requests getting blocked by their coding having something flagged, I merely added the printer's address to have it ignored by the router.
The obvious limitations of a router-based filtering solution: This product, as the saying goes, is what it is. It is a filtering wireless router. It filters that which it broadcasts. It is not, however, a comprehensive solution to all potential pornography problems. For example, it does not (nor can it) block 3G or 4G internet for a smartphone - something parents with smartphone-toting kids will want to be aware of (other solutions for this problem do exist on iOS and Android, if not also on Windows Phone). Nor does it block anything when a laptop, for example, is using another wireless network, such as a work or coffee shop network. At this time, for myself and my family, this isn't an issue.
It cannot block anyone who comes and disconnects it from plugging the ethernet cable that runs from your cable or DSL modem to the router directly into the ethernet jack on their computer. This would enable unfiltered access to all the internet offers. Pandora's Hope does, however, for an additional cost, offer a lock-box that holds your modem and router and prevents this problem.
The biggest potential issue I foresee is that, as 4G signals become faster, and wireless internet becomes more widely available (city-wide free internet is already a topic of conversation in some places), this product may be rendered obsolete. This appears to be many years down the road, if it happens at all, but it's something to be aware of. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet solution to the pornography problem (see: Jesus, teaching on sin and the nature of the heart).
Summary
At this time, Pandora's Hope is the best solution I have found to keeping unwanted content out of our home and our lives. Unlike stock "parental controls" featured on other wireless routers, this one actually works. It can be very thoroughly customized, works very well without slowing down internet, and is the most affordable blocking solution I've found. We love the idea that everyone who visits or stays in our home is protected with no additional cost or software needed. Basically, I have no complaints whatsoever. This gives us exactly what we wanted and needed. I highly recommend the Pandora's Hope Pro router, and I have no reason to believe that the base model would be any worse for most households.
