Home web filters and monitors

[mikeprice]

Hi all

 

Been thinking (sorry)

 

anyway - the oldest 2 grandkids are often on their "pads" - ipads much to my disapproval!

 

anyway - they are set up for kids - I think - mostly

 

but what they actually go on is sort of up to them

The younger is 6 and autistic - so he has unexpected reaction to some rather exteme stuff (horros cartoons etc - but if very good at not going on it when we say

(we think???)

 

the oldest is 11 and - well, approaching teenage so who knows where she will wander??

 

so I was thinking - we could do with something to at least monitor, and preferably block, websites

but it has to work on iPads on the network as well as windows, android, iphones etc etc

 

and not cost loads as they are not here that much

 

 

and if it all works then maybe we could gently suggest that they use it at home when the opportuniy arises

 

 

any idea of things that are available at the moment

 

and work??

 

 

thanks

[mikeprice]

Oh - and it needs to work on the ipads and iphones with no implementation that interfers with their operation when they go home

 

otherwise I'll be in trouble

 

and anyway - I don;t know the password for the admin account for them

[lmrogers]

Introducing 1.1.1.1 for Families (cloudflare.com)

 

Possibly use that on a separate wifi network that you connect their devices to.

[bushby]

smoothwall have a consumer aimed at parents product https://smoothwall.com/solutions/qustodio

[timbo343]

smoothwall have a consumer aimed at parents product https://smoothwall.com/solutions/qustodio

There might be a chance that you could still get 2 free devices via this link but that's all it's limited to, then you have to pay for more devices.

 

https://www.qustodio.com/en/30-days-school-special/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=parentsessionsuk

Edited February 8, 2024 by timbo343

[TheHyperTechie]

What about Jamf Now? I believe it is aimed for more parental controls. I can't comment on it providing a web filter though. It also states that it is 'free' for 3 devices - https://www.jamf.com/products/jamf-now/

 

If this isn't viable. Can you not force Google safe search on/set an age rating via your home router? I know that some home ISP's offer this kind of feature. Not a solution, but might help?

[caffrey]

pihole?

[Foresthippy]

I use cleanbrowsing at home, which is DNS based. Costs about £5 a month and is pretty customisable. You set the DNS in DHCP to a specified DNS server and it filters everything on your network. I also use the guest wifi for my kids cause I can switch it off at bedtime and not affect the "adults" wifi. I set my own devices to use a different DNS server, so that I'm unfiltered.

[gszech]

Introducing 1.1.1.1 for Families (cloudflare.com)

 

Possibly use that on a separate wifi network that you connect their devices to.

 

+1 for this. It's free and easy to configure on devices or you can apply to the whole wifi.

[bknaggs]

Open DNS have a family protection option

 

https://www.opendns.com/setupguide/#familyshield

 

Apple’s tracking protection breaks it by default when private browsing is used as they use their own DNS servers but it’s an option that can be changed in the settings.

Edited February 8, 2024 by bknaggs
A link is always useful

[free780]

Isn’t the fundamental issue you need to SSL inspect all traffic to correctly do this?

 

Of course apps like YouTube may break and require exceptions. Would the filtering be effective?

[psydii]

We use Netgear smart parental controls, its no smoothwall, but it does "ok". It drops hints from time to time that it is based on Circle.

 

Its a paid service - I don't want to spend any more time than necessary troubleshooting computers at home - I scratch that itch all day long at work!

 

They also have an app that can install onto devices that adds another layer of capability, but we haven't (yet) needed to go down that route.

 

Most of the apple Privacy stuff has to be disabled too. (coz its basically a VPN). Sometimes on Windows PCs Chrome punches through the filter to allow youtube though this seems to have recently been either fixed by NG/Circle or Google saw reason and stopped using tunnelling (aka vpns) to evade network level youtube filtering.

 

I do wish though the exception rules exposed a little more functionality and had a few more pre-made applications allow/block rules; 'always' allowing google classroom was a pain to set up by hand - have you looked at the allow list for drive?!

Edited February 8, 2024 by psydii

[skywalkergr]

why not firewalla?

https://firewalla.com/

Easy Setup