Forum Discussion

Charlotte5678's avatar
Charlotte5678
Tuning in
9 months ago

Child safe DOES NOT WORK

Virgin media's child safe does not work. If it does work then it stops working randomly, so unless you are regularly checking you wouldn't know it has stopped blocking sites. THIS IS A HUGE RISK TO CHILDREN. Especially if parents have no idea that it is not working despite being switched on. People have a right to know that there is an issue so they can make sure their children are not at risk online. 

Have had problems with it for over a year, so many frustrating phone calls and ridiculous suggestions from customer service - someone suggested perhaps my 8 year old was using a dns on her amazon tablet... despite it not working on ANY devices. 

No one gets back to me as to whether it's fixed or not. Even if it works again it then fails a few days later.

This is a serious problem. Their website has tips on 'keeping children safe online' but yet they are doing nothing towards that. They state they've worked with the uk council to develop 5 tips to keep children safe online. First one being - their parental controls, which don't work. They advertise their 'market leading parental controls' which is false advertisement. 

Was told I'd have to pay to end my contract...so I either have to risk my daughters online safety or pay a hefty fee..... ???? I'm sorry but Virgin are not providing the service that I signed up for. Neither are they in any hurry to fix a problem that should be a priority, especially as looking through this forum there any so many others with this same problem 

Customer service clearly have no idea how to fix the problem. 

I have reported this issue to Ofcom. 

Anyone with children should regularly check that their child safe is working...not that you should have to if virgin media were actually providing the service they claim to provide. 

https://my.virginmedia.com/discover/protecting-children-matters/

  • Client62's avatar
    Client62
    Alessandro Volta
    9 months ago

    Check if your infant has has figured out how to use either a Public DNS or Apple Relay.
    Both will bypass Child Safe.

    • Charlotte5678's avatar
      Charlotte5678
      Tuning in
      9 months ago

      Child safe does not work on any device that our WiFi is connected to, including my phone. My daughter is 8 and still believes in the tooth fairy, her using a public dns or apple relay is highly unlikely

      So many other people have this problem and it with virgins service not clever 8 year olds 

      • Adduxi's avatar
        Adduxi
        Very Insightful Person
        9 months ago

        Manually set the DNS on your child's devices.  Cloudflare DNS's are 1.1.1.3 and 1.0.0.3 for malware and adult filtering.  Or use modem mode and your own Router using the same DNS and this will propagate to all your devices.

  • asim18's avatar
    asim18
    Rising star
    9 months ago

    I don't believe VM's filters will block YouTube and the BBC. Websites which I personally wouldn't want any kidsto have access to. In the case of an 8year old I wouldn't recommend a blacklist system, my personal advise would be to just block absolutely everything and use a system which lets you whitelist carefully selected domains only.

    • Charlotte5678's avatar
      Charlotte5678
      Tuning in
      9 months ago

      Unfortunately at the moment virgins filters block absolutely nothing, I wish it was just a case of trying to block youtube

      Was told by customer service to individually put in every website I want blocked.. I mean even if I wanted to sit here for the next 10 years typing in every chat room every adult site, every drug site ect ... it wouldn't work anyway because none of their websafe features do. Could type in a 100 websites and not a single one would be blocked 

      • Adduxi's avatar
        Adduxi
        Very Insightful Person
        9 months ago

        This is a prime example of having to bite the bullet and take control of your own networking.  I know it's money, and an ISP "should" do this and that, but you have seen the reality.

        If you are really worried, a 3rd Party router and better DNS ( Cloudflare, OpenDNS etc ) will go a long way to alleviate your concerns.

        Also if you do decide to move ISP, most generally let you use 3rd party kit, so it's not money wasted and the solution will still work.

  • legacy1's avatar
    legacy1
    Alessandro Volta
    9 months ago

    Their will always be a problem with what you want to allow and not and people think VM can give that control when they can't well they can't block well known sites as it is which is the problem they need to solve first.

    So a DNS server run by you which yes you then need a router to point to is what people really want and VM just can't do this. 

  • Deanwinchester's avatar
    Deanwinchester
    Joining in
    9 months ago

    Having the same issue. Mine worked for a week then it stopped working on every device in the house. Contacted support, all they could do was switch it on and off and ask me to reboot the router and try again after clearing cache and trying a new browser. Still didn’t work 🤷🏻‍♂️ looking at the amount of posts about it, it seems to be broken.

    wouldn’t be an issue if they just

     offered a solution in the router to block web addresses 🤷🏻‍♂️

    • Charlotte5678's avatar
      Charlotte5678
      Tuning in
      9 months ago

      Yes exactly, I've had the issue ever since I signed up to an 18 month contract, got 4 months left. In the beginning factory reseting the router worked. I don't know how many times I've called up now, after the phone calls it works for a few days, presume they reset the settings. They said they can see there's a serious issue on the forums and will raise it with the IT team but its been over a year so clearly have done nothing.

      I have looked at every option and other than changing settings on every device or buying another router there is nothing you can do cause as you said the setting can't be changed on the vm hub...but when paying for a service don't feel like I should have to then buy another router it's just ridiculous 

      Was told the other day I can't leave my contract early without paying a fee but I'm going to fight it. Given them a year to fix it 

      They are falsely advertising that their service is family friendly it's clearly far from it, especially when many people probably have no idea that their kids can access anything eventho their websafe is turned on. 

      Virgin is the number one service complained about to ofcom..can definitely see why