BT has turned on its Parental Controls porn shield, letting parents and families filter all internet connected devices in the home.
Parents have the option of picking from three levels of pre-set filters – strict, moderate and light – to block out sites with adult content and other unsuitable material.
Content filters can and do indiscriminately pick up innocuous sites and can sometimes let inappropriate sites through. Users of BT Parental Controls will have the option of tailoring the block lists, adding and blocking sites as they see fit.
Read Recombu Digital’s guide to parental internet controlsParental Controls is a whole-home solution, meaning that filtering is applied at the gateway to the home. Any desktop, tablet or phone connected to the BT Home Hub (or whatever wireless router you use with your BT Broadband) will be affected by the filters.
The filter can be turned off at specific times, for example to act as a “watershed” and it can also be set to an additional level, “homework time” – for extra peace of mind when children are doing their homework.
New customers will be asked during sign up whether or not they want the software. Parental Controls will be active by default, so if customers don’t want or need them they’ll have to opt out, in line with the government’s wishes.
All existing customers will be contacted by BT throughout 2014 and will be asked if they want to set up the controls or not.
Pete Oliver, managing director for consumer commercial marketing and digital at BT, said: “BT takes the issue of online child protection extremely seriously and we are very pleased to be able to launch the whole-home filter to help parents keep their families safe online.
“It adds to the many tools we already make available for free to our customers. We’ve been focused on the issue of online safety since we developed the world’s first Cleanfeed filter to block child abuse images and made the technology available free to other ISPs across the world a decade ago.”
Cleanfeed blocks access to illegal websites listed by the IWF (Internet Watch Foundation). The IWF’s sole remit is to track sites suspected of hosting illegal child abuse imagery. BT Parental Controls blocks access to legal, adult content.
As well as applying the new software free of charge, BT has committed to spending £1 million as part of a joint venture to help raise awareness of internet safety issues among families.
Image: Rob Pongsajapan/Flickr
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