Open
Open source and free of any trackers.
Safe
Protects from DNS manipulation typically employed to censor websites, social media, and messaging apps.
Fast
Fast and highly-available DNS resolvers deployed to 200+ locations world-wide.
As seen on
XDA-Developers, Android Police, OpenSource.com, TechRadar, FreeAppsForMe.com, Hacker News, Fix The Internet 2020: Mozilla Builders, State of the Onion 2020: The Tor Project.
Secure
Blocks adware, spyware, ransomware, and malware that steal personal information like location data, takeover accounts, and show intrusive ads.
Transparent
Reveals network activity of installed apps and lets you disable, uninstall, or firewall them.
App Firewall
Prevent apps from connecting to the Internet.
A firewall blocks any app connecting to the Internet over Wifi or Mobile data. Since most forms of surveillance require the data to be sent over the network to a server, firewalling them effectively mitigates that threat (File Managers, Alarm Clock, Calculator are few such examples of apps that do not require any Internet access to function).
Smartphone's entire network traffic is tunneled through our app (by the means of a Virtual Private Network). All outgoing connections from blacklisted apps are blocked right in its tracks.
Content Blocking
Block ads, trackers, malware and more.
Messaging apps, for instance, can't be firewalled altogether, but can be, instead, blocked from accessing certain server endpoints of known ad-networks and trackers. This is how popular browser based content blockers like uBlock Origin work (in addition to doing a host of other things).
Specifically, we achieve this by firewalling traffic at the DNS layer: By sending empty responses when asked to resolve blacklisted domain names. For example, domain name of a known tracker, say follows.you.everywhere.com, is never resolved by rethinkdns; resulting in effectively letting other traffic from the apps through, but to this particular domain.
DNS based content-blocking isn't as full-proof as traditional Firewalls. It is rather trivial for apps to by-pass it, though in practice, not many, if any, apps do so. Our test runs show upto 60% of the connections are made to trackers and ad-networks, but this is entirely a function of the phone manufacturer and the apps installed.
Anti-Censorship
Circumvent the most common way the Internet is censored.
The app encrypts your requests sent to Domain Name System (DNS) server run by rethinkdns with presence in our 200+ locations world-wide. DNS servers are the address book of the internet: A DNS server provides the exact addresses you need to visit a website or open an app.
However, it is common to alter responses sent by DNS servers to block access or redirect to fake websites. By encrypting the connection to DNS servers on your Android device, rethinkdns helps ensure that the results can’t be manipulated, so you can safely access the internet.
Monitoring
Keep tabs on incoming and outgoing Internet traffic.
If enabled, the connectivity (DNS) logs are collected and analysed. Automated reports flag previously unknown or suspicious connections, and reveal the extent of attempt to steal data by spyware networks. In our tests, around 60% of the traffic is flagged and reported as being initiated by known spyware. Logs generated are made available in near-real time to the user for their own analysis.
The rethinkdns app keeps track of connections an app makes from the Android device and tracks its data usage. This reveals the apps that over-zealously keep connecting to various endpoints on the Internet.