topic Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active. in Everything else

Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

NeilK — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 11:03:53 GMT

Hi

I have been using safeguard for a number of months now and has been working fine... However this week, even though it is showing as active it doesn't seem to be blocking the categories or websites on the block lists...

Has anyone else had the same problem? Customer service said they are not aware of any problems...

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

Strat — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 11:14:36 GMT

Moderators Note
This topic has been moved from Fibre Broadband to Everything Else.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

Percy2 — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 20:51:58 GMT

Yes, seeing similar issues to you. Safeguard is ON, but some well known adult sites are not being blocked.

I have also added specific sites to the block sites list and these are just ignored.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

NeilK — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 20:55:15 GMT

Was it working before? Mine was l working fine up n until about a week ago..

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

Percy2 — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 21:04:24 GMT

Yes, it was 'good to go'. I had added quite a few sites to the blocked list and none were accessible and none of the mainstream adult sites.
As it happens I installed Eero mesh wi-fi about a week ago, which required Wi-fi on the router to be turned off and the router to be re-started and it was then that I noticed. I thought it was the Eero install that had upset something even though it only dangles of one of the router's ethernet ports and picks up it's DNS settings from the router.
So I have turned off Safeguard, disconnected Eero and then turned Safeguard back on and get the same no-blocked results with just a wired PC, some sites blocked others not.

What is odd is that some sites, that are supposed to be blocked, may partially show in a 'text' form without graphics with a non structured layout. All a bit bizarre TBH.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

tcj1971 — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 17:46:06 GMT

Looks like a few of us are having the same problem with Safeguard suddenly not working

It is so annoying. It was torture in 2018 when the same thing happened. It took them many months to sort Safeguard out on my account 😞

Anybody heard anything? I have a support ticket open on my account but it has not been answered yet

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

NeilK — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 17:44:29 GMT

I have a ticket open and no reply yet either...annoying

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

tcj1971 — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 15:28:53 GMT

A ticket was raised on April 1st about Safeguard not working and I have still not heard nothing. Meanwhile all these dodgy websites are accessable on our internet....not good enough😞

I am also now getting a Error Message on my account page

An error has occurred

There's currently an issue with your account, meaning you can't make any changes to your services. Give us a call on 0800 432 0200 and we'll see if we can help.

What is going on at Plusnet. It really is a bad service we are getting here

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

SWLBristol — Sat, 10 Apr 2021 18:29:06 GMT

I've discovered I have the same problem, I thought it was because I'd replaced my Hub One with a BT Business Smart Hub but it's not, something definately not working at Plusnet's end. It was working fine for me up until last week and if it wasn't for changing the hub over 2 days ago I would have had no idea it wasn't working now. I'll raise it with plusnet and hopefully it can be quickly fixed!

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

KSS — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 18:55:26 GMT

Same problem, reported over a week ago and no response from Plusnet. Very poor service and on the verge of cancelling due to unsafe internet access for the family

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

adamskirton — Tue, 11 May 2021 20:03:27 GMT

Been having similar problems with Safeguard not working … first noticed around 7th April 2021.

I appreciate and applaud Plusnet staff like Alex, Tayyard, Miguel etc have all tried hard to help via phone email and text … but they now admit it is a problem at their end and the internal team are working on it.

They say I might be able to resolve it by getting a new router and changing my DNS … not sure how to do that! Apparently, there is only one type of router available to those of us on Fibre and it won’t currently block out inappropriate content. I’m told a non-fibre router may be able to work, so am considering that option … I’d rather be slower and safer!

Having given Plusnet a month to resolve the matter I’m seriously considering changing to another provider who is able to protect my family. I left before some years ago when a similar thing happened.

A manager is phoning me back tomorrow to see if they can waive the termination fee.

I'm in contact with a lot of other very concerned people and will also be writing to my MP.

At a time when young people are suffering severe mental health issues, committing horrendous crimes and even committing suicide due to accessing inappropriate online content, protecting families should be the priority for internet providers.

Rev Adam Skirton

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Duplicate posts removed as per Forum Rules.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

jab1 — Tue, 11 May 2021 19:07:44 GMT

@adamskirton Just a minor point - but repetitive posting of the same comment are not really appreciated, and serve no real purpose - other than to annoy others.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

tcj1971 — Tue, 11 May 2021 19:23:56 GMT

@jab1

He could be annoyed that nothing is getting done about Safeguard like the rest of us, but then again he could be on his phone posting his message.Done this before myself on other forums when you think you haven't posted a reply due to your sceen hanging, so you keep pressing submit post

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

jab1 — Tue, 11 May 2021 19:30:21 GMT

He could be, @tcj1971 - but FOUR times? I appreciate that for those this affects, it is frustrating, to say the least, but those entries were subtly 'modified' to avoid a possible 'repetitive post' filter, which does exist on some forums, but not, AFAIK, this one.

Bad etiquette, anyway.- and from a man of the Church.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

adamskirton — Tue, 11 May 2021 21:08:51 GMT

Hi John

I do apologise ... confess this is my first venture into this sort of thing and i thought it was like i was emailing separate people ... think am starting to get the idea how this thing works ... I'm glad I got called away, otherwise I'd have 'replied' to even more people!! ...sorry for any upset caused

Adam

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

Townman — Thu, 13 May 2021 16:07:30 GMT

@adamskirton wrote:

At a time when young people are suffering severe mental health issues, committing horrendous crimes and even committing suicide due to accessing inappropriate online content, protecting families should be the priority for internet providers.

Rev Adam Skirton

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Duplicate posts removed as per Forum Rules.

... and where does parental responsibility to supervise internet use by their children end and becomes something to be abdicated to someone else?

No technology "protection" can ever be 100% reliable against all risks and it takes very little technical knowledge to defeat the functionality of any ISP provided safeguarding. All it takes is just a little configuration tweak on their individual piece of IT and the safeguarding people appear to want to so fundamentally depend upon is totally nullified ... and that has nothing to do with what ISPs can or cannot do, for they do not control the configuration of user's laptops / tablets / mobile phones.

The right place for safeguarding is on the device and the use of the device being at all times supervised. That is why safeguarding is something which needs to be owned by parents at all times.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

daggermonkey — Thu, 13 May 2021 19:53:09 GMT

@Townman I'm sure that many parents like myself are simply using Safeguard as one tool in their toolkit of protection. That's not abdicating your parental responsibility. Plusnet offer a service, I use that service, when the service fails I don't expect to have to change to a different service, I expect my service provider to resolve it. I appreciate as an IT professional that tech savvy children can work around it if they can work out how. That doesn't mean Plusnet can allow the service to fail and not inform anyone.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

tywrshbsc — Thu, 13 May 2021 21:34:37 GMT

@daggermonkey

I agree. I don't expect safeguard to do much more than reduce the chance of accidentally clicking on something unpleasant. I don't expect it to be perfect and I certainly don't expect it to stop teenagers intent on viewing porn.

I'm more disappointed with Plusnet's customer relations and internal communication failure than the technical failure. Well over a month after this was reported by several customers, Plusnet has made no attempt to warn others and is still fobbing us off with different excuses.

I thought I was finally getting somewhere when I got through to someone who didn't just tell me to switch it off and on again or blame me for not having a Plusnet router. However, this is last official response I had, on 13th April, exactly a month ago:

Good afternoon

We are awaiting an update from our safeguarding team. The relevant information has been logged with them under task INFOPS-50672.

Once this has been done we will contact you accordingly.

Still waiting for an update, never mind an actual solution.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

adamskirton — Fri, 14 May 2021 14:29:22 GMT

Thanks for your reply @Townman

I'm sure it is easy for techies to defeat Plusnet's Safeguard ... and we're not totally depending on Plusnet ... but the statistics show that the majority of first exposures to internet porn and other 'nasties' are accidental.

It is unpleasant for us as adults to have inappropriate content appear on our screens following innocent searches ... and it can be lifechanging, in a very harmful way, for children.

If you look at the Online Safety Bill, as announced in the Queens speech this week you will see the sort of fines that will be levied on companies in the future for such incidents. How much is 10% of Plusnet's turnover?

I take offense at you trying to blame parents for a breach in contract by Plusnet. This is the sort of lack of concern for the safety of children and slowness in action, that could lead to big penalties in the future.

Plusnet have a duty of care to protect children not bully parents.

Re: Safeguard not working even though showing as active.

Townman — Fri, 14 May 2021 15:02:19 GMT

Plusnet is not bullying anyone. I am like you a customer and am equally entitled to express an opinion in an open forum.

The Queen's speech and the measures government propose are not the panacea people who do not understand, hope that they might be. It sounds good, it looks like something is being done - let's pass the responsibility to ISPs so we do not have to supervise and discipline our kids - but is is a false and empty hope, one that is sure to fail to meet expectations. Technology can only block content that has been clearly graded.

Expecting ISP delivered safeguarding to block access to "inappropriate" content, is not unlike expecting gun laws to stop gun crime. Gun laws only limit the behaviour of law abiding persons.

Similarly safe guarding services can only block what has been marked as "adult" (or other rated) content. So - not intending to be overly provocative - if your church website held potentially offensive content, which was not rated appropriately, no level of technology safeguarding would block its delivery into a "safe guarded" environment.

Safe guarding technology does not "look" at an image and then by some technological marvel determine that it is "inappropriate". Much like film censorship, content needs to be classified by the content creator, then safeguarding technology can filter out "inappropriate" content as determined by the user's settings. If the content is not classified it cannot be filtered.

Do you really think that all purveyors of potentially "inappropriate" content mark their material appropriately?

Please read the following - Content-control software - Wikipedia - take particular note of the sections "DNS-based filtering" (as far as I know this is what Plusnet implements), "Content labelling" which clarifies the essentialness of content labelling and "Bypassing filters" which explains how safeguarding measures might be defeated.

You might find this detailed reference to how websites should specify their site's content rating so as to aid effective content classification - meta name = rating | How do I use the metatag Rating? (metatags.org) - I note with interest that the Poulner Baptist Chapel's website offers no content rating at all, not even "safe for kids".

Hence my firm position that sound safeguarding is a parental responsibility which can never be abdicated to technology, which by its very nature technology is imperfect - we both know that only God is perfect.