Virgin Media Community

[JFK1980]

I'm looking at services that let you block adult or non-child-friendly content on kids' devices. 

Firstly, has anyone got any good solutions? My kids use Android phones, Amazon Fire Tablets, and Windows laptops. However, there might be Chromebooks from school coming into the picture, too, soon.

Ideally, I'd like to block it at the source, via the router, as when they have friends over, sometimes those friends connect to the WiFi so wouldn't want them seeing anything.

However, if installing apps on devices is better, I'm happy to go down that route too.

I guess my main goal is to block them from seeing harmful content. But maybe other features, like time limits might be useful too. 

One option I saw was OpenDNS FamilyShield which runs at the router level. Would this work with Virgin?

I personally use a VPN so wouldn't want this banned for everyone, but the kids probably don't need to use a VPN so would need it to be flexible. 

Thanks!

[legacy1]

---

@JFK1980 wrote:

One option I saw was OpenDNS FamilyShield which runs at the router level. Would this work with Virgin?

---

Yes use hub in modem mode with your own router with 1Gb ports and set the DNS on it.

[用心棒]

Be aware that it is possible to override DNS settings locally on a device and/or in a browser so it is important to make sure their settings cannot be modified to benefit from OpenDNS FamilyShield's protection

-- 
I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media. Learn more
Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer and solved, or use  Kudos to say thanks

[Tudor]

It can be done, but you will find it’s expensive to implement.

I run two Raspberry Pi machines with Pi-Hole for DNS queries that are redirected to whatever secure DSN server you require. My router has code in it to redirect all DNS queries to these Pi-Holes unless the DNS query actually comes from one of them. It therefore does not matter what DNS server is hard coded into any device, it will just get redirected to one of the Pi-Hole servers.