Forum Discussion

Lizziefinigan1's avatar
Lizziefinigan1
Joining in
12 months ago

Child has VPN bypassing parental controls

Hello there,

 

I have two teenage boys who have very cleverly figured out if the download a vpn onto their devices they can bypass the child safe settings I have on the router. Any way around this please? 

8 Replies

  • Tudor's avatar
    Tudor
    Very Insightful Person

    "The big red switch", about the only thing you can do is turn off the power! There are various things you can do, but you need very expensive and technical equipment to get anywhere defeating teenagers these days. You don’t even need a VPN, all you do is change the DNS servers on the device used. Really it’s all down to education. 

  • The simple answer is have the conversation.  

    A techie answer is to stick the hub in modem mode and use your own router ensuring that its firewall blocks ports 443 (tcp) and 1194 (udp). This is not foolproof and might also block work VPN connections WFH. 

    • Tudor's avatar
      Tudor
      Very Insightful Person

      "A techie answer is to stick the hub in modem mode and use your own router ensuring that its firewall blocks ports 443 (tcp) and 1194 (udp). This is not foolproof and might also block work VPN connections"

      That’s all well and good, but a pin-hole reset of the hub will negate this and most situations including modem mode and your own router.

      • legacy1's avatar
        legacy1
        Alessandro Volta

        Tudor wrote:

        That’s all well and good, but a pin-hole reset of the hub will negate this and most situations including modem mode and your own router.


        lock hub and router in a box😋....until they learn to picklock 

  • legacy1's avatar
    legacy1
    Alessandro Volta

    Lizziefinigan1 wrote:

    Hello there,

     

    I have two teenage boys who have very cleverly figured out if the download a vpn onto their devices they can bypass the child safe settings I have on the router. Any way around this please? 


    So not that cleverly he only needed to change DNS

    VM can only do so much before it gets out of hand to the point it still is not enough   

  • legacy1's avatar
    legacy1
    Alessandro Volta

    If its Psiphon pro you pretty much had it!

     only way is to not let them install stuff on their phone which you can't do so only option is to get them a dumb phone

  • Client62's avatar
    Client62
    Alessandro Volta

    Parents give adult tools to infants and are then shocked when the unexpected happens.

    I can imagine kids at school have a golden pages on this topic and maintain detailed notes on how to
    rapidly bypass the parental controls offered by ISPs from A&A to Zen !