In short
Filtering DNS server for the local network: blocklists,
categories per profile, learning that suggests (it blocks on its own only
if you turn that option on), encrypted resolution (DNS over TLS, then
HTTPS). Encrypted journal on
the box (30 days), never sent anywhere. Interface https://warda, API
with a token, warda commands.
When a device wants to open a site, it first asks for its address. Warda receives that request and decides:
- if the name serves advertising or tracking, or if it is dangerous (scam, malware), Warda answers "nothing here" and the content does not show;
- otherwise it asks a trusted service (Quad9, then Cloudflare) for the address, encrypted, and gives it to the device.
What Warda keeps, and where. The list of names asked stays on the box, encrypted, for 30 days. It never leaves your home: no online account, no "cloud". It shows you what happens and helps to find trackers. Once a day, unless you turn it off, Warda sends an anonymous count so that its publisher knows how many boxes exist: a number drawn anew at random each day and never kept, the version, the kind of installation, the country chosen, the processor and, from Warda 0.7.10, the plan of the box (Free, Subscription or Warda Business: it comes only from your customer area, nothing on the box can change it). Nothing about your network, your devices or the sites visited.
Where your box is. To put the right country in the identifier of your installation, Warda asks its online service once a week which country your public address is in. The question carries nothing of your box, and you can choose the country yourself (chapter 6).
If you turn on the collective base (off by default, chapter 4), the box also sends domain names only — the suggestions your administrators accept or reject, and the names it doubts — to the online service of Warda, which returns the opinion of its analysis service. Never a device, a person, a time or an address, and the identity of your box is not passed to the analysis service.
Three protections go through the online service of Warda (from Warda 0.8.0), each only when you use it:
- protection outside the home (chapter 11): the queries of the devices you enrol travel encrypted from the device to your box, through Cloudflare and the online service of Warda, which keeps none of them;
- exposure on the Internet (chapter 5): the online service tries a list of ports at your public address; the box sends it only the numbers of the ports your router opened by itself;
- data breaches (chapter 5): for each e-mail address watched, only the first 6 characters of a fingerprint leave the box, never the address.
The reputation of the domains (from Warda 0.8.2, chapter 4, on unless
you turn it off): a domain your household does not know well goes alone
(example.com, never the full name nor your device) to the online service
of Warda for the opinion of its analysis service, once an administrator
has accepted the terms of use in force (those of 2026-10-14).
What Warda never does:
- it blocks nothing on its own beyond its lists and its protections: its suggestions wait for your approval, unless you turn on, at the learning level High, the automatic blocking of the trackers it is sure of (chapter 5); the restricted mode blocks only for the connected objects you put in it (chapter 4);
- it does not show adults what other adults visit: each one only sees how many requests were made and what was blocked for them;
- it does not read the content of pages: it only sees the names of sites.