Is CleanBrowsing down in South Africa today?

DNS filter blocks a legitimate site

If a website you need is getting blocked — say, a news outlet or a work tool — the filter has likely miscategorized it. Go to your CleanBrowsing dashboard, open the Whitelist section, and add the domain manually. Changes take effect within a few minutes. If you''re on a shared network, ask the account admin to do it, since regular users don''t have whitelist access by default.

Site loads but login page fails

This usually happens when the filter intercepts authentication-related requests. Try these steps:

- Clear browser cookies and cache, then reload

- Check if the domain and its subdomains (like auth.example.com) are both whitelisted

- Disable browser extensions that might conflict with DNS resolution

- Test the same site in a private browsing window

Online banking blocked or partially broken

Financial platforms sometimes use CDN subdomains that get caught by content filters. If your bank''s main page loads but transfers or payment forms don''t work, the issue is almost certainly a blocked resource from a third-party domain. Open browser dev tools, check the Network tab for failed requests, and whitelist any flagged domains.

DNS not applying after config change

You updated the filter profile or added a rule, but nothing changed. First, flush your local DNS cache — on Windows run ipconfig /flushdns, on macOS use sudo dscacheutil -flushcache. Then confirm your device or router is actually pointing to CleanBrowsing DNS servers and not a fallback address set by your ISP.

High latency when DNS filtering is on

- Switch from the default server to the one geographically closer to you — CleanBrowsing has endpoints in multiple regions

- Use DNS-over-HTTPS or DNS-over-TLS instead of plain DNS to reduce inconsistent response times

- Check if your router''s firmware is outdated — old firmware often handles encrypted DNS poorly

Dashboard not loading or freezing

If the control panel hangs or won''t open, it''s rarely a filter issue — more likely a browser or session problem. Try a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R), log out and back in, or switch to a different browser. If the issue persists across devices, the service itself may be experiencing an outage — check their official status page.