Real Site is a feature in Avast Premium Security that protects you against DNS hijacking. We recommend always keeping Real Site enabled and only disabling it for troubleshooting purposes. This article explains how to adjust Real Site settings to exclude a URL from Real Site protection, or route your traffic through trustworthy Avast DNS servers even when using an encrypted DNS browser.

Exclude a website

You may want to exclude a trusted URL from Real Site protection if your network blocks or filters encrypted DNS requests. To exclude a website from Real Site protection:

1. Open Avast Premium Security and go to ☰ Menu ▸ Settings.
2. Select General ▸ Exceptions, then click Add exception.
3. Type the website URL into the text box using the following example as a reference: dns://*.example.net*. Then click Add exception to save the exclusion.

The URL is added to the exceptions list. For information on managing the exceptions list, refer to the following article:

• Excluding certain files or websites from scanning in Avast Antivirus and Avast One

Support encryption in DoH browsers

Many internet browsers now include the DoH (DNS over HTTPS) protocol, which encrypts the content of your DNS requests, making them invisible to others on your network. When you set Real Site to work with browsers that use DoH, your requests are routed through trusted Avast DNS servers and even the end points (such as Google and Cloudflare) are unable to see your DNS queries.

1. Open Avast Premium Security, then select Protection ▸ Real Site.
2. Click the Settings icon on the right side of the Real Site screen.
3. Tick the box next to Support encrypted DNS in browsers to enable this setting, or untick the box to disable it.

Disable Real Site

1. Open Avast Premium Security, then select Protection ▸ Real Site.
2. Click the green (ON) slider, then select a time duration from the list.
3. Click OK, Stop to confirm that you are disabling Real Site intentionally.

Real Site is disabled for the selected time duration and automatically enables again after this time passes. To manually enable Real Site, click the slider again so that it changes from red (OFF) to green (ON).

Further recommendations

For more information about Real Site, refer to the following article:

• Real Site - Frequently Asked Questions

Updated on: 02/06/2022