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Safeguard won't stay enabled

FIXED
JonoH
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Registered: ‎29-09-2011

Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

I'm sorry @tcj1971  I can't confirm the cause of the problem, nor why it took so long to resolve. I can say it was the highest of priorities internally to resolve and that we really working on it's resolution. 

 

I can tell you that the issue that caused this outage should not happen again, and if it did we would now be able to fix this extremely quickly (think hours not weeks and months) however we can't guarantee that nothing else will ever go wrong with the service, we can say that we continue to monitor safeguard and we appreciate your letting us know about the issues it had.

 

Now Safeguard is up and running though I want to say something as a relatively tech savvy father, and not as a Plusnet representative, Safeguard and no product like it will ever be 100% effective at blocking all adult content and it cannot protect your children from all online threats, but it is and remains a useful tool in the prevention of exposing youngsters to harm, but there are more threats online than adult content and they often lurk in spaces specifically meant for children and young teens (that Safeguard would allow) and as such it's essential in my opinion to monitor children's internet usage and their online communications and not just assume that because you've filtered their access to adult material that they are safe. 

 

Not everyone online is who they say they are and there's always the risk that your child is speaking to someone who wishes them harm.

 

If ever any of you has any questions about best practices and tips to stay safe online, or if you think there's value in us blogging or making a thread about it, please just ask. 

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
tcj1971
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Registered: ‎14-02-2017

Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

Thanks for the informative reply @JonoH

Still wondering though if it it actually a plusnet service or a third party that provides the Safeguard service and they have dragged their heels for whatever reason on why Safeguard went kaput in the first place....and the time before and the time before that in recent years when it stopped working

Again thanks for the follow up reply
JonoH
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

It's a little more complicated than that, as theres a 3rd party involvement but also group involvement and our own pieces that we are responsible for.

 

Ultimately though, we provide the service and we need to stand by it, it's our responsibility to ensure it works for our customers and even though on this occasion it is not the fault of any 3rd party, but if it was we wouldn't pass the buck so to speak anyway.

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
adamskirton
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

Thank you so much for fixing this .. and your assurances that if it happens again it will be immediately fixed.

Can I suggest, that if it were to happen again and it wasn't fixed immediately, that Plusnet warn us parents by email that we need to be extra vigilant in our quest to protect our children? And give us a daily emailed us, update. This might help keep children safe and parent calm .. and stop lots of phone calls into your offices and correspondence to our MPs and your CEO.

Also could you fully brief your front line staff, so they can give us honest up to date answers, as it has been very frustrating for both customers and, no doubt, your staff to be left in the dark as we  were. It gave us the impression that Plusnet didn't care about the safety of children, especially when we the customers  were having to inform staff and eventually managers as to what was had been going on of 6 weeks on this occasion.

Please could you pass our sincere thanks on to your fixing tech team and all who have worked hard to resolve this Smiley

 

 

tcj1971
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

What's all this black and white list thing???

Is it what we currently have our Safeguard settings at?
JonoH
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

I'll certainly pass your feedback on, but we're unlikely to commit to daily emailed updates, especially as there's very likely little easily digestible information that we would be willing to share. 

 

Regarding the staff, I'm not sure why this happened but it's likely not been helped with us all working from home, traditionally I would have spoken to our internal coms team and had this issue on every TV screen in the building every 30 minutes. I'm not trying to make excuses, I agree that there were failures here I'm just trying to explain possible reasons that agents weren't as aware of this issue and its impact as we'd have liked.

 

@tcj1971 

Safeguard allows you to select individual website addresses that you can either permanently allow, or restrict, useful if there's a specific page you want to grant access to that's currently being filtered, or block, if you deem it something you don't want your children being exposed to, but falls outside what is filtered.

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
daggermonkey
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

@adamskirton @tcj1971 @JonoH 

 

err what can I say.....

Last night an email to the BT CEO and today by 3:00pm a call from a nice chap called Mark at Plusnet telling me it's now a SEV 1 incident.

I've been in the office today and then out with a friend - yes really 🙂 so only just home.

BUT Safeguard now appears to be working for me and I hope it is for everyone.

@JonoH  - I don't understand why it takes me\us to push the issue. Couldn't you have done the same? Maybe a lesson learnt?

Either  way I am glad it is fixed and hope it doesn't reoccur,

 

Have a nice weekend all and stay safe 

 

JonoH
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

I'm pleased you got a response to your complaint but to be honest this was already the highest priority fix in our space and has been for a while, as part of the team that investigated the cause of and resolution to this problem I can hand on heart say this  would have been resolved today with or without that call/email. I do however as always encourage people who are dissatisfied to let us know, the Community is and always has been a great way for us to asses the real world impact of problems and allows me to provide the voice of the customer to some of the decision makers.

 

I know it's not always easy and I know sometimes it's frustrating when I can't share with you all the details you want but I am always reading your comments and passing them on and using them to help prioritise development time. Thanks again everyone.

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
daggermonkey
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

@JonoH  Frankly I have no way of believing if what you say is true but i don't want to get into a debate. 

I logged a ticket on Sunday and it wasn't a Sev 1 then, only today.

tcj1971
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

@daggermonkey

It does make you wonder. The pressure was building as it was appearing on a main review website over the last week or so and even more so on this forum.

We/I have been here before though with the Safeguard problem in 2018/19 when it took 6 months to sort it, but there was nowhere near as much pressure on as this latest one as we us lot have put in

Anyway. It's working again so let's see how we go in the next few months. Whatever relationship plusnet have with whoever provides the Safeguard service need to make sure this never happens again otherwise I am gone elsewhere for our broadband

Peace.....I think 😜
JonoH
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled


@daggermonkey wrote:

@JonoH  Frankly I have no way of believing if what you say is true but i don't want to get into a debate. 

I logged a ticket on Sunday and it wasn't a Sev 1 then, only today.


All I can say is that I've publicly stated that this was the highest level incident we have (I don't use internal jargon). I wouldn't be able to nor would I want to publicly and openly lie to our community, I simply wouldn't give any information rather than do that. However I wish you the best and hope that you have a great weekend now that the service is restored Smiley 

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
tywrshbsc
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

Plusnet may have resolved the technical problem but they haven't resolved their attitude to communication and customer service.  I phoned Plusnet about this several times over a month ago and they eventually admitted that there was a problem and said they would "update me in due course".  

Wondered why Plusnet hasn't told me directly that it's fixed, I logged into the Help Assist portal.  There's a note at the bottom which says:

"Script User - Automated Script Pool
6:15am, Monday 10 May 2021
Question closed automatically after 14 days of inactivity."

So here I am patiently waiting for an update and they've closed the question without telling me!  All the other updates were copied to me by email, but not this one!

I'm really not impressed.  I understand that things can break and can be hard to fix (e.g. if they needed a part it probably isn't the sort of thing that's in stock at Currys) but the poor communication has really annoyed me.

JonoH
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

I absolutely agree with you @tywrshbsc whilst I fully understand it might take CS longer than until now to communicate with you that the issue has been resolved there's no excuse at all for closing that ticket.

I can see your account username, and with your permission I'd like to investigate what happened and provide feedback to the relevant people to try to make sure this doesn't happen again.

 Jono H
 Plusnet Community Manager
tywrshbsc
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

@JonoH

tywrshbsc
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Re: Safeguard won't stay enabled

@JonoH

I wonder if you would also be able to raise the issue of training for the people answering the phones.  I phoned several times to report this problem and have been told the following in separate calls:

1) Switch it off and on again and wait 2 hours

2) Switch it off and on again and wait 24 hours

3) SafeGuard only works if you have a Hub One router

4) Plusnet no longer offers safeGuard to new customers because we had a lot of problems.

I admit that option 1 often works, but I got the impression that option 2 was just to get rid of me for a bit longer.  The lady who suggested option 3 was doing her best to be helpful and even tried to find the instructions for my non-Plusnet router to help me set it up.  I appreciate her efforts but she just didn't seem to have a clue what I was asking about.  Option 4 is at least half true but safeguard is still listed on the Plusnet website in many places.

I do have some sympathy as I'm sure they do get a lot of phone calls from people who can't be bothered to read the instructions but it is very hard to get through to somebody who will actually do anything.

There is also a major security issue - when somebody did eventually phone me back, he asked me security questions.  PLEASE DO NOT EVER DO THIS.  Every time a genuine caller does this adds credibility to phishing calls and emails.  It must stop.

 

Thanks again for your efforts in fixing the problem.