Baruch Hashem, and thank you to all, that this program exists!

At this point I am a little stuck trying to find a good filter for my android phone. I tried NetSpark for a few days, but found it too powerful for the things that aren't important to me and not powerful enough for the things that are.

What I want:
1. Something to block my browser: porn, nudity, lingerie, bikinis, etc... It doesn't matter if I can disable the feature. The main thing for me is just to reduce the impulsivity and put some time between stimulus and response.

What I don't want:
1. Surrender total control of my phone
2. Require permission from others to disable/uninstall

So basically just a really effective filter for my phone's browser.  Any ideas?

Meanwhile, every time I try a new app or filter I end up "testing" it to see if it will work later when I really need it to.  Of course, this 'testing' has led to lots of temptation that I unfortunately gave in to.

It seems like the best plan for me is to minimize how I use my phone (just get news via podcast not browser, and in general use only sound not visual whenever possible).

If I try another filter I would really like to know that it is highly likely to succeed for me so I don't have to 'test' it and end up worse off than if I never used a filter at all.

In theory it could be effective if I had somebody else test it for me.  Unfortunately that is out of the question at this time for several reasons.

Thank you very much for your advice.

I can give you some ideas but just as a heads up, if you have access to how to turn off your filter you're essentially making it useless. I actually did this myself a while ago and now I let my mom have the control over them and how to edit the settings. This is because I fell a lot because as soon as an urge would come, I would turn it off so the responsible thing for me was to get my mom to be in charge of the filters. This is sort of similar to someone who is addicted to a drug and is trying to quit, and as a part of the process to quit he puts an unlimited amount of his drug of choice in a safe to which he knows the password to. Obviously this person sets himself up for failure. 

Anyway look into webchaver, you can get it for free through venishmartem.com check my signature below for the link. The accountability software is free but you'll still have to pay I think 2 dollars for filtering if you want to, it's optional so you don't have to pay anything if you don't want filtering. This'll discourage you from watching porn because even though it's free you still have to agree to pay a certain amount of money if they do get any screenshots of you watching any explicit material and the stuff gets reviewed by actual people and things that pop up by accident are disregarded. You can also add people that you know to receive the screen shot reports and that'll add more accountability because they'll also be notified if you fall.

And there's other filtering options for you that are pretty good and should work in conjunction with webchaver. One is Microsoft family safety and this is for free. For this filter to effectively work though you do have to set someone as a guardian that is someone other than you. You also should utilize their allowed website list to be the most safe and it's really not restrictive at all because you can send your guardian notifications that he'll receive immediately to access websites that get blocked. There's an app for both android and iphone and it's very convenient for me despite the "restrictive" features. But this really depends on if your guardian is quick to respond to such notifications.

I use both of these for my devices and things are going great for me so I recommend this for you and go check out there features more in detail on there websites. But again in order to really utilize them to the fullest you'll have to involve someone else with the filters and you'll have to use the "only allowed websites list" option. Or you can simply get webchaver and use microsoft family safety to block just porn websites (this is just safesearch that you can't turn off) and to block some other websites you wish to block like youtube because at the end of the day you'll be held accountable by the screenshots, but using the allowed websites only function is the best option in conjunction with webchaver. This is how I've been safe online and it's the best thing you can do for yourself. Just as another heads up you will likely have to also play around with any android family features that they offer in order to get rid of loopholes on your device, I'm not familiar with android so I can't really help you do this but I can tell you that you'll have to get the covenant eyes browser which you can get for free with webchaver and also microsoft edge and you have to make them the only browsers you have on your phone although you can use one or the other. So you'll have to get rid of the google play store or at least put that in control of someone who will then with supervision allow you to download certain apps that you may need but that won't allow you to get apps that are browsers.

Hi HardHabit,

Welcome to the club. Wishing you much Hatzlacha. I don't post so often anymore, however I read your post and figured I will suggest an option which might be beneficial for you.
(I'm not discussing the cons of being able to bypass the filter, as you mentioned earlier you tend to "test" it. I think Yosef Hatzaddik explained part of the problem)

Check out pluckeye, it by default blocks all images and you can add configuration lists to filter more sites based on url's or keywords. You can also allow some sites to display images if needed. It also allows time based filtering so you can set up different settings for day or night. It works with a time delay so you can make your own adjustments but need to wait the time that you set, or you can get a friend to expedite your request if they are added to your list.

Hatzlacha Rabba

HardHabit wrote on 17 Feb 2022 04:58:

Try thekosheros.com/

Thank you for the excellent suggestions!

Right now I am going to try pluckeye since it looks perfect for me.  So far it is very easy to use and it is compatible with Linux, so I can actually install it on my laptop as well as my phone. I will try and give an update regardless of how it turns out.

By the way, in general, I don't doubt that the advice about accountability and lack of the ability to disable the features is very wise.  It could very well be that I will have to take those measures in the future. From what I know about my particular patterns I believe that blocking all images will be a practical solution for me.

Thanks again for the help and encouragement. I am middle-aged with two chronic illnesses, but I view this nisayon as the major obstacle to getting and staying close to Hashem. And I find that being close to Hashem is the key to all else.  So I am thoroughly determined to succeed one way or another.  This program gives me high hopes for finally succeeding!