Table of Contents
KeexyBox - Manage the Blacklist
The Blacklist is KeexyBox's internal database containing the domains to block. All domains or websites added in the blacklist have to be categorized. These categories are used to be assigned to connection profiles in order to block domains.
Go to the Blacklist manager:
- Use your browser and connect to the KeexyBox Management Web interface.
- On left menu, go to
Connection settings → Blacklist
. - You will be redirect to the page
Blacklist categories
.
The page will show you the list of available Blacklist categories. By default the Blacklist is empty, KeexyBox is not provided with any list of domains. So you will have to add or import domains from lists you can download from the Internet. KeexyBox allows you to import Blacklist made for SquidGuard and also lists made for Pi-Hole.
You should find some insteresting lists to import from this address: http://www.squidguard.org/blacklists.html.
When you make changes on the Blacklist, the listing of categories is not updated immediately. This is because the Blacklist can contains millions of domains and the refresh of data is done in the background to keep a good user experience. However you can force the refresh by clicking on .
What is a domain?
Before working on the Blacklist, you have to understand what is a domain and how KeexyBox block domains in the Blacklist.
For KeexyBox, a domain is the address of the website that users type in the browser URL bar to visit the website. We will take as an example the list of domains below to explain the behavior of KeexyBox to block websites:
- domain.com
- www2.domain.com
- sub.domain.com
- host1.sub.domain.com
- host2.sub.domain.com
You can see that domain.com
is the common part of the name between domains. www
, www2
and sub
are subdomains of domain.com
. There is also another level of subdomain where host1
and host2
are subdomains of sub.domain.com
.
- Q: What's happen if I just add
domain.com
in the Blacklist? - A: This will block
domain.com
and every subdomains ofdomain.com
. That meansdomain.com
,www.domain.com
,www2.domain.com
,sub.domain.com
,host1.sub.domain.com
andhost2.sub.domain.com
will be blocked.
- Q: What's happen if I just add
www.domain.com
in the Blacklist? - A: This will block only
www.domain.com
and all other domains will be allowed.
- Q: What's happen if I just add
sub.domain.com
in the Blacklist? - A: This will block
sub.domain.com
and all subdomains ofsub.domain.com
. That meanssub.domain.com
,host1.sub.domain.com
andhost2.sub.domain.com
will be blocked.domain.com
,www.domain.com
andwww2.domain.com
will be allowed.
- Q: What's happen if I just add
host1.sub.domain.com
in the Blacklist? - A: This will block only
host1.sub.domain.com
and all other domains will be allowed.
Add or import domains to the Blacklist
On the page Blacklist categories
click on the plus button. You will be redirected to a form to add domains to the Blacklist.
If you import list that contains millions of domains, the import can take several minutes. So go away, and take a coffee during the importation .
There are 3 ways to add domains to the Blacklist. It is explained below.
Add domains to the Blacklist manually
By this way, you can directly enter the domain names to add to the Blacklist. To to it:
- Enter the domains to add in the text area:
Here you can add domains to the Blacklist line per line or separated by a space
. Overwrite the category of existing domains in the Blacklist
: Check this box if the category must be replaced for existing domains you are adding.- Select an existing
Category
orCreate new category
by entering the name of this new category. - Click on
Save
.
Import domains to the Blacklist from lists available on the Internet
By this way, you can import domains from text files lists directly accessible from the Internet. This is typically the method to use to import for example lists provided for Pi-Hole. To to it:
- Enter in the text area, URLs that pointing to text files that contains domains to import:
You can here import domains to the Blacklist from lists available on the Internet (one URL per line)
. - Select an existing
Category
orCreate new category
by entering the name of this new category. - Click on
Save
.
Import domains to the Blacklist from a file
By this way, you can import domains from tar.gz files that you have downloaded manually from the Internet. This is typically the method to use to import for example lists provided for SquidGuard. To to it:
- At the bottom of the page, Click on
Import
. You will be redirected to the import form. Select tar.gz file
: Click onBrowse
.- Select the tar.gz file to import.
- Click on
Save
.
Only domains
part of the file are imported. During the import, domains are automaticaly categorized.
Manage categories
You can do some actions on categories of domains on the page Blacklist categories
.
On the column action to the right of each category:
- You can click on if you want to delete the category with domains it contains.
- You can click on if you want to export the category to tar.gz file format.
You also can do bulk actions on categories:
- Check boxes to the left of the categories you want to do an action.
- At the bottom of the page, in the selection menu
(select action)
, choose one of the available actions. - Click on
Run
to confirm the action.
The available bulk actions are discribed below.
Change the category
: This action allows you to rename the category. It can take few minutes if there are millions domains in the selected categories.Export categories
: This action allows you to export selected categories. It can take several minutes if there are millions domains in the selected categories.Delete categories
: This action allows you to delete the selected categories with the domains they contain.
Query the Blacklist and manage domains in it
This tool allows you to find domains in the Blacklist. It allows you to delete domains or move them to another category.
On the page Blacklist categories
click on the search button. You will be redirected to the Blacklist's query form page.
There are 3 fields to query the blacklist:
- The first to the left, allows you to define the number of results per page.
- The second allows you to search in one of the categories.
- The third allows you to enter the domain name to search.
You have to click on the icon to execute the search. The domains found will be listed. You now have the option of doing some actions on it.
To make action on domains :
- Check boxes to the left of domains you want to do an action.
- At the bottom of the page, in the selection menu
(select action)
, choose one of the available actions. - Click on
Run
to confirm the action.
The available actions are discribed below.
Change the category
: This action allows you to move the domain to another category.Delete
: This action allows you to delete the domain from the Blacklist.
What about the Whitelist?
There is no whitelist on KeexyBox. However, you can create a Blacklist category called for example whitelist
, add domains you wish whitelist in it, and never assign the whitelist
category to any profile. This workaround can help but will not cover every cases.
You also would have to whitelist a domain because it is not reachable while it is not in the Blacklist. There is a diagnostic tool in KeexyBox that can help you to solve this problem. See this topic.