BT offer new Parental Controls

jaybeetoo

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/hub/c/346,6679/?s_cid=con_FURL_help/parentalcontrols

This looks like a much better solution than installing software on PCs.

kwikbreaks

Except when they get it wrong and you need to visit some site or other they are blocking it's a lot easier to tweak or uninstall stuff on your own machine than it is to phone in and get a change.

Virtually all of the parental control type filters block some pretty innocuous sites while letting nasty stuff through.

3G under 18 blocking is a PITA - I've had to have it removed on Three and Vodafone in the opast so I could check the lottery results.

Nilrem

jaybeetoo wrote: »

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/hub/c/346,6679/?s_cid=con_FURL_help/parentalcontrols

This looks like a much better solution than installing software on PCs.

Except you can't control it on a per PC basis (unless I'm mistaken - it'll treat all your devices as the same), it'll undoubtedly block sites that if you've got multiple children one might need to do homework, but you don't want a younger child seeing.

The idea is sort of good, but the implementation of these filters almost always leaves so much to be desired that you might as well not bother with them.

The network level filters are great for dealing with gross filtering, but often easily bypassed with a little knowledge of the sort many kids know now (a lot of the tricks work in schools...), things like using a non ISP provided DNS server (google DNS, Open DNS), a proxy (often used to get round geoblocking as well when you want to watch a clip that is meant to be for Americans only...).

And often block stuff that they shouldn't, or by mistake/laziness in how it's set up/administered - for example the Aussies department of trade issued a decree for various counterfeit sites to be blocked - but they ended up blocking thousands of sites as they set it to be a block of the IP address used by them, which is rather like blocking access to a towerblock or a shopping centre because you want to stop people accessing one flat/shop (many sites are hosted on shared servers, or servers that might have one outward facing IP).