Child safe DOES NOT WORK

[Charlotte5678]

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]

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

[Charlotte5678]

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 

[jpeg1]

A better option is Opendns Family Shield. It needs a little effort to set up but is very reliable.

https://www.opendns.com/home-internet-security/

This will work until your child is old enough to learn how to bypass it 

[Adduxi]

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.

[Charlotte5678]

Thankyou for your reply, I think I will have to do that, in between changing Internet providers. 

However I shouldn't have to. Virgin clearly have an issue with their Websafe which needs to be resolved. People are paying for a service which they aren't providing and many people probably do not realise that their child safe is not working on their kids devices. 

Virgin clearly must know by this point by the number of posts dating back to 2022 with the same issue. And probably the many phone calls from people like me just going round in circles. So they should notify people of the issue to 'keep children safe online'.. and actually fix the problem. 

[legacy1]

I posted here on how they can fix the problem for thoughts in router mode

How VM can fix web safe for router mode - Virgin Media Community - 5482089

[asim18]

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.

[legacy1]

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]

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 🤷🏻‍♂️