Help & Support

The free TestFiltering service enables you to test that your Internet Filter is blocking illegal, harmful, and inappropriate content.

TestFiltering+ builds on this to provide bulk automated and regular testing of your Internet connection to ensure that your filter is always working effectively, provide an audit trail of this, and to notify you if it fails.

The service connects your Chromium based web browser to a TestFiltering+ account, and then sends results from the TestFiltering service back to your account. You can then analyse the data in aggregate to investigate issues and gaps in your filter coverage. You can also export reports for auditing requirements, and setup notification and digest emails to monitor your filter over time.

TestFiltering+ is currently delivered through a Chrome browser extension, so any device or browser that supports installing our extension can be connected. For example, Windows, MacOS devices or Chromebooks will work with the service.

Devices running other browsers such as Firefox or Safari are currently not supported, along with any versions of Chrome that do not support installing extensions such as Chrome on Android.

We are currently working on porting the browser extension to Firefox and Safari, this will enable mobile devices running Android and iOS to use the automated service.

TestFiltering+ offers a number of ways to monitor and view the data that is collected:

• The dashboard gives an overview of results for the past week
• The Device Manager enables you to see the status of individual devices as well as access their test logs and see the results
• The analytics panel aggregates data enabling you to see your results over time, it offers a number of views and filters to segregate the data.

You will need a TestFiltering account, a subscription to TestFiltering+, and at least one internet connected device that has Google Chrome v88 or higher (or other Chromium based browsers that have access to the Chrome Extension Store) to be able to automatically test your internet connection.

All devices are connected to a TestFiltering account, this enables you to monitor the status of your devices and networks and get alerted when tests fail.

Go to the account registration page, and create your login details, select your school, and agree to the terms of service. You will now be able to access your new account.

Once you have registered an account, you will be able to subscribe to the TestFiltering+ service, from your account dashboard you can click the “Subscribe” link in the dashboard, from here you can procure the service, selecting the number of devices you wish to connect.

Our service is charged per device, per year. Access current pricing on the TestFiltering+ page.

Yes, if you want to centrally monitor multiple sites from a single account, then this can be done with the current service. We do not currently offer logins that have a restricted view, or logins that have overview of multiple accounts.

To connect a device, go into the Devices Manager. You must also have the Chrome Extension installed before you can connect a device.

Just click the Add button and enter a device name, the extension will then trigger a toast popup to tell you that the device is connected.

The device will now start collecting telemetry, you can monitor individual results from the Results tab associated with each device in the Device Manager.

There are multiple deployment mechanisms that can be used, depending on your environment (For example Microsoft InTune and Google Admin Console).

When the extension is deployed through your deployment mechanism, you must deliver it with your Account Enrolment Key inserted into the local storage for the extension.

Find out more about auto-deployment and generate your Account Enrolment Key on the Auto Device Enrolment page.

The extension has a different colour icon depending on the status of the service on the device:

• Black – The device is not connected to the service, or no tests have been run
• Green - The last test run was successful
• Orange – One or more of the tests on the previous run was not successful

If you cannot see the status of the extension on the toolbar, you can go into the extensions manager and then pin the extension to the toolbar. You can also click the icon on the extension to see more status information.

To get notified by email of your service status you must setup a notification in the Notifications Manager. There are two types of notification: a Flash Alert, or a Digest Email.

A flash alert will send you an email immediately when an unsuccessful test is recorded. A digest email will send you an overview of your test results either daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. The email will be sent to you on the selected schedule at the same time as you add the notification.

You can deactivate devices through the Device Manager by clicking on the device you wish to remove, and then clicking the deactivate button on the toolbar. You will then be asked to confirm the device deactivation.

If the device is yet to receive any telemetry, then the device will be deleted, otherwise it will be archived so that you can still access previous results. Deactivated devices do not count towards your device quota.

You can view results in two locations:

• In the Device Manager, you can view the logs from individual results for each device
• The Analytics Report gives you an aggregated overview of your results, grouped by several different metrics

The Analytics Report presents your results grouped by several metrics, and enables the results to be filtered by those metrics:

• Tests – See your results grouped by test, and show results for only certain tests
• Dates – See a list of results grouped by day and specify date ranges
• Networks –results will be displayed grouped into each network, enabling you to see or filter by where the results are coming from
• Devices – See results per device, and refine the interface to view specific devices
• Providers – Group and refine results by the network provider name

We have provided a Network Manager to enable you to specify the IP ranges of your various networks, this will allow you to segregate your results into named locations so you can see where gaps are.

The magnifying glass icon in the top right hand corner of the Analytics Report will open up a selection of controls for filtering the results, enabling refinement by timeframe, device, network, and provider.

A PDF export function is provided in the Analytics Report, enabling you to export the current view as a PDF document. You can also export the raw logs of each device from within the Devices Manager as a CSV file.

Great work! All your devices are passing test on an ongoing basis. Have you got enough devices testing to ensure that all configurations are covered?

TestFiltering is only one tool to help you with your wider safeguarding, clearly if all your devices are passing, you must have a filtering solution in place. But it is also critical to ensure that all the features of the filter are enabled such as decryption, and your have robust monitoring policies in place.

Find out more about best practice with your filtering and monitoring provision through the advice offered by the UK Safer Internet Centre.

Firstly check that you have the extension installed, and that your account has available devices in the quota, also that your device is connected to the internet, and that testfiltering.com is not being blocked by your filter.

If you have the extension installed and when you add the device, the extension presents a toast popup indicating that it could not connect, please contact us through the contact form and we will help you troubleshoot the issue.

There are several things to investigate when a device fails a filtering test, firstly you need to gather some information about the device that will help you understand why it has failed:

• Which device it is?
• Where was the device when it failed (e.g. at home or in school)?
• Who was using the device when the failure occurred?
• Which filtering mechanism should have been applied to the device when the failure occurred?
• How is the device managed (e.g. MDM)?
• Has the device been tampered with?
• Are there other devices on the same network that are also reporting failures?

With physical access to the device, you should then be able to determine where the failure occurred, which could be one of the following:

• The filter is not applied to the IP address or network where the device experienced the failure
• The wrong policy has been applied to the device or user or the default fallback policy is too unrestricted
• The browser extension that is facilitating the on-device filtering is not functioning correctly or has been uninstalled
• The device has been compromised, or a VPN has been installed, causing network traffic to be routed around the filter
• The filter is not configured correctly or has failed