Not a list of questions — a list of symptoms, in the words you would use, each with the handful of things that actually cause it and a way to tell which one is yours before you change anything. Written by people, dated, and honest about the 12 situations Haven cannot fix at all.
23 symptoms, grouped by where they happen.
The DNS layer: setup, the verification check, and everything that quietly overrides it.
The check is honest and it is usually right: something on this device is still answering DNS questions itself. Four things do that, and they are easy to tell apart.
Something is putting the DNS settings back. Almost always it is another program that also considers DNS its job, and it is worth finding out which before setting it a third time.
On Android this means Private DNS is set to Automatic rather than to the family resolver. On iPhone it usually means the profile is installed but a second profile or a VPN is winning.
Worth knowing which of three things happened, because they have different answers and only one of them is a gap in the filter.
Haven pins Google, YouTube, Bing and DuckDuckGo to their forced-safe addresses in the hosts file. If it is not sticking, either the setup section is missing or the browser is not asking the device.
When the setup is right on more than one device and protection still does not hold, the thing changing the answer is upstream of your house. Some internet providers intercept DNS and answer it themselves.
A device managed by an organisation will not let you change DNS, and that is working as intended. Haven has a real answer here, but it is not the DNS layer.
Trust cards, blocked pages and the badge, in a desktop browser.
Haven only speaks on pages it recognises as a shop, and it says nothing on pages that are not. Most of the time the silence is correct; three things make it wrong.
That is a real state, not a stuck spinner: Haven has never assessed this company and has started. It is deliberately never rendered as a verdict, because a pending answer and an answer are not the same thing.
Household rules are enforced on the device, so a rule that is not on the device does not apply. Nearly always this is a device that has not synced.
Verdicts, unknown shops, and the company behind a marketplace listing.
That is a real answer and it is the one Haven is most careful about. It means the evidence is too thin to say anything confidently — not that the company is fine, and not that it is bad.
Tell us. Every verdict is built from evidence you can read, each piece carries its source, and a verdict about a real business is not something anyone at Haven gets to change quietly either.
On a marketplace the company you are buying from is often the third-party seller rather than the brand on the box, and the page moves that name around. Haven tries several places for it and refuses the marketplace's own name.
Rules, the parent PIN, the join code, and getting every device onto the same settings.
The PIN is stored as a hash, so nobody at Haven can read it back to you — including us. It can be replaced from a signed-in dashboard.
A join code is full control of the household, including the power to switch its rules off. There is a remedy, and it has a real cost you should know before pressing it.
Rules live in one place and travel to devices. When a device is out of step it is almost always the code it was given, or a sync it never completed.
The two devices are running different sets of rules, or one of them has something the household rule cannot reach.
The Android app, its Shop tab browser, and the Safari extension on iPhone.
That is Compass refusing to guess. It reads Android's actual Private DNS setting rather than inferring it, and if it cannot read it, it says unread rather than off.
The Shop tab is a real browser carrying the same shopping surface as the desktop extension. If it is silent, the same three reasons apply as on a desktop, plus one of its own.
Safari asks for permission per site, and it offers an option that looks cautious and lapses silently. That option is the usual answer.
Signing in without a password, linking a household, and changing what you pay.
Haven has no passwords, so the link is the only way in and it matters that it lands. There are four reasons it does not, and the page deliberately cannot tell you which.
A payment and a household are two different records, and they are joined by the join code you enter at checkout. If that step was skipped, the payment exists and has nothing to attach to.
All three are self-service through the payment provider's own portal, reached from your account page. Haven never handles your card details.
Then it is a gap, and the gap is ours. Reporting it takes a minute, we show you exactly what gets attached before anything is sent, and it is the only way a symptom that is not on this page ends up on it.