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We have always been quite relaxed with internet access for our 2 children 12 & 14. The balance between YouTube and exercise has gone wrong recently and I want to be able to monitor and have a bit more control over who logs on, for how long, and what they watch.
I can't be the first Dad to think this. What did everyone else do?
Get all Victorian about it and switch it off.
That’s what I do
2 routers; kids on one, you on the other. Theirs switches of at X o'clock
as scaredypants says - that's the easiest solution
or just take their devices off them - that's what I did
Probably look at one of the routers with controls. I can control what time anyone can access the internet and block anyone connected with a simple aftermarket router Tp link.
Hand the devices over or use a router that allows you set time limits for device.
Several options here. Depends on how geeky you want to be. I’ve gone full geek with separate networks and per-device time limits with manual override as the sword of Damacles hanging over them
my colleague has a far less geeky solution that he swears by: disneycircle https://meetcircle.com
I sacked off the router that came with the fibre modem and replaced it with a ubiquiti unification ac pro. The review here (and all his subsequent follow ons) are super clear as to what it can do.
I bought it to improve wifi around the house which it has but there is a whole level of functionality with creating user accounts etc which are possible but which I have not explored.
I just have each device time limited on the router (see your router control panel) depending on the child with a warning that any device can be searched and confiscated at any time till they are 16. I'm sure they could circumvent things but we are on a trust basis and it probably* works
*yes I know.. they are teenagers.
We had a time limit set up for all our kids by our IT bod and it took our oldest about two days before he got round it. These days we just pull out the power cable on the router when we want them to do somerhing which is a bit of a PITA in the evenings as our tv is internet, too.
But they will just use their phones for internet instead.
I got one of these..
It's a network monitoring/control tool that does way more than just device control. But for your case you setup users in the app and assign each device to their user and you can setup schedules, manually 'pause' internet access, restrict devices from accessing the internet while still allowing local network access.
It also has a wifi analyzer, monitors and tests broadband speeds, has network vulnerability testing and wifi intrusion detection. You get a notification on your phone whenever a new device connects to your network and allows you to block it, allow it, assign it to a user.You can do bandwidth analysis to see which devices are sucking up all the t'internet..
Oh and if you assign a phone to each user it can create a digital fence so you know when people are in or out.
I've found it massively useful, it highlighted several broadband outages and speed drops that i would have been otherwise unaware of, friends coming over need permission to get on the internet (although i have a visitors wifi network that is isolated for them too). It also gives you the horrifying/hysterical realisation of just how many devices are on a home network these days. There are currently 4 of us in the house and there are 44 active devices connected to the network.!!!!
We just talk to them. No good just imposing limits IMHO at that age. Explain, talk, educate. Rinse and repeat.
We just talk to them. No good just imposing limits IMHO at that age. Explain, talk, educate.
This is always the first, best thing to do. I got the FingBox to help me sort out our terrible rural broadband issues, the user control was an added bonus i wasn't even aware off until I hooked it up.
Having said that it's handy for devices to be disconnected from the internet outside of agreed times because regardless of how enlightened you and your children are, that doesn't stop their friends from texting them at 1am.
One of mine uses his phone to listen to audiobooks in order to help get to sleep and it's nice to know that the temptation of having it by his bed is removed by virtue of the device being disconnected.
I would also say that the new iOS screentime features in iOS12 are very useful, you can essentially disable every app on the phone according to a schedule. In my example above, his phone won't do anything other than play audiobooks come bedtime. Screentime is controlled by a PIN number and through family sharing if you are an 'Apple' family..
Phones are kept downstairs at night. Alexas for music / audio books in their rooms.
That's fair enough.. I'd rather my children weren't used as advertising stooges for Amazon's money printing empire.
@craigw They only have 1gb per month on the plusnet sims I gave them and adding data is expensive. Hence they save it for when they need it. Wifi is free. Kids like free.
What we find difficult is that both my girls have mandatory chromebooks for school and that is what they have to use for most homework assignments....its very difficult to monitor in realtime whether they are homeworking or pissing around on you tube and then when the net shuts down there are howls of despair that the homework due in tomorrow can't be completed. TBH its a minefield these days and only getting worse...and don't get me started on whatsapp groups, snapchat and instagram...those are almost impossible to police for a parent. Thats where talking to them and discussing the realities of life is really important.
Hb70 - if your all on Apple iOS12 and an Apple ‘family’, the new screen time feature works very well.
That’s fair enough.. I’d rather my children weren’t used as advertising stooges for Amazon’s money printing empire.
Honest question - what do you mean? They use audible accounts / Spotify family - other than their preferences being harvested what issues are there?
.its very difficult to monitor in realtime whether they are homeworking or pissing around on you tube
At the risk of disappearing too far down the rabbit hole here, if you like a project, have a look at Pi-Hole, it's an opensource adblocker/DNS server for your network that allows you to control exactly what can and can't be accessed on the internet. I have it running in a VM on the house server and it's astonishing what tries to get into and out of your network. As an example, no-one in our house has a facebook account and yet it's the top blocked domain on the network with over 8000 access attempts per hour.
Using this also speeds up our internet as all blocked ads/domains are blocked at the point of request, so accessing a page with ads on it results in the blocked ads being blocked before the requests even leave your network rather than browser based blockers that block the ads as they are downloaded which has already used your bandwidth, with as little of that as I have, every little bit helps.!
You can use the built in reporting tools to analyze exactly what each device (via their IP address) has been accessing which gives you the information needed for the conversations about doing homework rather than messing about on YouTube.
Honest question – what do you mean? They use audible accounts / Spotify family – other than their preferences being harvested?
One of the reasons Alexa and OK Google are far more effective voice control apps than Siri is that they record and use everything said in range in order to improve the voice recognition technology but only respond if they hear the trigger word 'Alexa/OK Google'. You are welcome to believe that Amazon/Google aren't keeping or doing anything nefarious with that data, but the fact is that they are essentially listening to and transmitting to their cloud, everything that is said in your house 24/7.
The main reason Siri is considered rubbish is that the cloud based voice recognition technology doesn't kick until until after the keyword 'Hey Siri' is heard which is stored on your idevice when you set Siri up.. Nothing other than your request is sent to Apple's servers which means they are 100's of machineyears behind Amazon/Google in their voice recognition optimisation as they have far less data to work with.
As has been said many times before, the reason Alexa and google speakers are as cheap as they are is that they are not the product, you are.
.its very difficult to monitor in realtime whether they are homeworking or pissing around on you tube
Guys at work have a no devices in the bedroom policy which avoids some issues but creates others.
can you not block certain sites at the router?
Thanks H1ghland3r - nothing I wasn’t aware of there, maybe a bit Donald Rumsfeld though.
No problem.. We all make our own decisions about what we are willing to accept. I'm perfectly willing to admit that i'm quite a bit more paranoid about that kind of stuff than most. Don't even get me started on electricty smart meters and why i'm not happy about my electricity provider knowning when i've opened the fridge door for a late night snack.!! 🙂
😀👍
Guys at work have a no devices in the bedroom policy which avoids some issues but creates others.
I speak to parents of pupils at work and say "How would you feel about installing a high definition camera in your daughter's bedroom, and connecting it to the whole of the world via the internet?"
Usually they recoil instantly, until they realise that that is exactly what every smartphone is. I think the "No devices in the bedroom" is a good idea, and a device curfew too. Eg. All devices are to be on top of the fridge by 9pm.
the fact is that they are essentially listening to and transmitting to their cloud, everything that is said in your house 24/7.
They aren't. This has been categorically proven many times by geeks monitoring network packets.
It's ludicrous. The amount of money required to provision enough hardware to monitor live audio streams from tens of millions of customers would vastly outweigh any slim advertising advantage gained.
The device itself listens for the wake word (this is why you can only choose from three, they are pre-programmed) and only then does it send what you've said to its servers. This is why it responds even when the network is down, but in an American accent cos it's the built-in response. This is why it picks up the wake word instantly then there's a pause before the response as it sends the data off.
As has been said many times before, the reason Alexa and google speakers are as cheap as they are is that they are not the product, you are.
They are cheap because they want you to use the services. Not because they are harvesting data surreptitiously. FFS get over yourself. Apple home pod things are expensive because Apple take the piss and fleece their customers. And you're saying we're being manipulated lolz
As an example, no-one in our house has a facebook account and yet it’s the top blocked domain on the network with over 8000 access attempts per hour.
Why do you think this is?
Guys at work have a no devices in the bedroom policy which avoids some issues but creates others.
I struggle to see what issues this creates other than some initial enforcement arguments.
After a frankly terrifying review of my 13 year old daughters phone a few months ago (a whole world of wrong) this is now our policy and it works. As a result we now have a more engaged, nice and safer daughter in the house.
As our Headteacher neighbour pointed out, you don't allow a TV, bully or paedophile in your daughters room so why would you allow a phone ?
We have used apps, router restrictions and other rules without affect. No phones upstairs (including parents) has had a sustained, significant and positive impact.
Finally you need to go through your kids content. It feels wrong and invasive but you you need to do it..it doesn't matter how good you think your kids are, how safe or savvy you think they are, how good their school is or how good you think you are as parents, you need to go through their phones. Kids are vulnerable, not just other kids but your kids. We dodged a bullet but only just, as CEOP explained to us in detail.
Don’t even get me started on electricty smart meters and why i’m not happy about my electricity provider knowning when i’ve opened the fridge door for a late night snack.!!
Yeah, if you worry about that they can detect the voltage draw of porn too, it's secret tech but they can use a smart watch to correlate that with the amplitude and frequency of your bishop bashing and then blackmail you about the size of it too.....
use a smart watch to correlate that with the amplitude and frequency of your bishop bashing
I missed that on garmin activities?
I missed that on garmin activities?
Of course it's not in the main list, you have to log in under the special list of course.It's OK you can get around it by wrapping it up in tin foil
I have a similar dilemma & found this: https://getcoldturkey.com/ . With the free version I can monitor and show the evidence of how long they are spending on each app & am trying to talk them down from spending too long on YouTube etc. If I don't see that happening I will buy the paid version which allows you to limit access to apps and sites to certain times and durations, which means they can still access sites to do homework. There's a version for mobiles too.
They aren’t. This has been categorically proven many times by geeks monitoring network packets.
It’s ludicrous. The amount of money required to provision enough hardware to monitor live audio streams from tens of millions of customers would vastly outweigh any slim advertising advantage gained.
Ok, firstly, there is no reason to get unpleasant about it.
Secondly, I never claimed they were "monitoring live audio", i said that they used everything the speaker hears to profile and improve the speech recognition. Amazon and Google have both been upfront about this, you can even list everything your Alexa speaker has recorded you saying and delete it if you choose. You are of course correct that it would be ludicrous for them to record and store everything a speaker can pick up for every user but they do use the data.
They are cheap because they want you to use the services. Not because they are harvesting data surreptitiously. FFS get over yourself. Apple home pod things are expensive because Apple take the piss and fleece their customers. And you’re saying we’re being manipulated lolz
Ok, once again.. no need to be rude. At no point did I claim that Apple were the shining light in this but they have been very upfront about what they do and do not use in the way of customer data and I think it's pretty well accepted that they are either lying their ass off to the public or are far more interested in customer privacy than the competitors.As I said, Alexa and Google products are cheap because they want to harvest as much data about you as possible in order to better sell you stuff. Once again, they have both said as much in the past and their actions indicate that nothing about that policy has changed.. read the T&C's and it tells you as much.
Why do you think this is?
With regards to the Facebook requests..? It's because Facebook has trackers and links embedded into almost every website on the net. The recent data breach made it pretty clear thay they were/still are doing everything they can to track and profile people as much as possible whether they are logged into Facebook or not, or even if they don't have an account.. why.? so they can sell that data... The fact of the matter is that unregulated data collection and sale is just about the biggest business on the planet these days, you may think your information is worth nothing, that's your opinion. I respectfully hold a different opinion.
As this seems to be dragging the thread wildly off topic, i'm leaving it at that.
#EDIT : One final thing..
vastly outweigh any slim advertising advantage gained.
slim advantage.?? Facebook sells nothing, charges nothing for it's services. Their only product is their userbase and the information they have about them.. Slim advantage.?? How many billion $ are Facebook worth.?? You think they got all that money from Farmville.?
Thanks. All very helpful.
Facebook sells nothing, charges nothing for it’s services. Their only product is their userbase and the information they have about them
Well except for the advertising space they sell
H1ghland3r, I apologise for sounding rude, but you did appear to be going off on a standard tin-hat rant, which is something that annoys me greatly when it's unfounded.
i said that they used everything the speaker hears to profile and improve the speech recognition.
Only after you say the wake word and until your sentence is finished. It is not <i>"istening to and transmitting to their cloud, everything that is said in your house 24/7" </i>which is what you said.
At no point did I claim that Apple were the shining light in this but they have been very upfront about what they do and do not use in the way of customer data
Ok but then you also refer us to the T&Cs published by Google and Amazon, so they must be being upfront about it too?
The fact of the matter is that unregulated data collection and sale is just about the biggest business on the planet these days
It is. And there are legitimate concerns about this - but you don't need to inflate them which is what I feel you are doing. It's also worth noting that it's not just Google, Facebook and Amazon doing this.
One final point - imagine what the internet would be like if it wasn't funded by advertising. We'd all be paying £15/mo for a handful of websites from AOL. Remember that?
The internet was funded by porn, that’s a well known fact.
After that period of cash injection only then did advertising and all the associated advert/data hive selling find the expansion.
More worrying is the Experian hack where customers, all 20m of them, data/bank account/sort code name/address were hived off..
So before we all get uppity about about whether Google records chat or not, the underlying exposure risk comes from legitimate companies unable to ringfence private and secure data.
More worrying is the Experian hack where customers, all 20m of them, data/bank account/sort code name/address were hived off..
Ahh Experian... a company that can control your life based on data they collect/buy/fabricate and then make money from selling this on without consent... also they can lose your data, or modify it and cripple your finances with no come back...
Yeah. Experian are dodgier, IMO.
Anyhow- back on track.
My (soon to be) 11 y.o is requesting a SIM card for his birthday. I'm fine with router-based restrictions for WiFi, but, apart from a sensible conversation, what other recommendations are there? Limited data SIM cards?
NB- Android family, not apple. I had to reset his Google account to an adult one, as I buggered up one of the security settings on his 'child' account that would have resulted in his entire account being deleted in 30 days.
That Pi-hole thing looks interesting. Is it tricky to setup?
i used to be into all this geeky nonsense but i've got kids of my own now so out of touch with everything.
That Pi-hole thing looks interesting. Is it tricky to setup?
It is, it's an indispensable part of my network these days. Pretty easy to setup, easiest way is to get yourself a Raspberry Pi and set it up on that but if you have a PC/server that is on 24/7 then you can easily set it up in a Virtual Machine.. Here are some links.
Setting up PiHole in a VM :
On a Pi : https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2017/setting-pi-hole-whole-home-adtracker-blocking
If you want to get fancy you can setup DNS over HTTPS to encrypt DNS requests (you have to use the CLoudflare DNS servers though, they are fast and considered to respect privacy though so that's no bad thing.)
https://bendews.com/posts/implement-dns-over-https/