Question on parental control capabilities

Ashram56

Good Morning,

I currently own a "Circle" device for my parental control setup, and I find it rather limited in many respects, specifically:

- No ability to set "per application" limit, for example "limit this list of application to one hour total", but does not limit the rest

- No ability to define schedules, such as "only allows online video content from 6PM to 8PM" for example

 

Does Bitdefender Box parental control allows this ? I could not find any detailed information on Box parental control capabilities

 

Thanks and regards

 

Ashram56

Anyone with a Box 2 can respond to this question ? Or Bitdefender ?

 

Thanks and regards

Getafix

Part a may be of no interest to you.

a) I wasn't interested in content filtering, more in time management.  I created child profiles but took them off, because when you pause a PC in a child profile, it does so using Bitdefender installed on that PC, not at the box routing level.  Using the bitdefender software on the PC, bitdefender brought up a blue screen over whatever was running on the PC and all it allowed was a change of the logged in user or shut down (if I remember correctly).  BUT, whatever was running on the PC in the back kept going - for example a YouTube stream.  That's hardly what you want.  When you pause a non-child-profile device, it appears that the box stops routing traffic from the internet to that device, which is what I actually wanted.

Part b is what I know and a suggestion that may be of use to you...

b) There are lots of categories for filtering and there are schedules and it seemed pretty comprehensive to me, with reports to the parent and all.  I don't know if you can mix and match categories and schedules.  What you could try is to create a bitdefender central account and this may let you use the system so you can see what you can and can't do.  If you go to the bitdefender site, and you go to home | bitdefender central you should be able to create the account there and use the parental control in there, once you create a child profile.  It may be that you need an activated product to create child profiles, but hopefully not.  If that works, you should have answers to what you need...

Before the box I tried something called the Firewalla.  That did not work for me but perhaps it could work for you.

Ashram56

Many thanks for your answer

 

I'm also actually looking at Time Management, although there are some content I would like to filter as well (such as "no Netflix before 6PM and after 8PM" :-)). Odd that a child profile would use the Bitdefender app, how would that work on a tablet or a phone ? "Circle" blocks at the box level, so you don't have to worry about installing other SW (although yes Bitdefender is installed on the PC itself).

 

I'll try your suggestion to connect to Bitdefender central and create an account.

 

Regards

Ashram56

Coming back on this: at least according to the user interface on the web portal, simply when using Bitdefender Total Security (I have a licence for 10 devices), there does not seem to have a lot of granularity/controls for time management:

- You can set "restriction hours", which prevent Internet connection completely during the time period defined

- You can define a "time limit", which accounts all usage regardless of content (so for example no distinction between Video content vs other content - would be useful to allow Internet access for work for ex, but prevents access to YouTube/Netflix outside of certain working hours)

 

So it's strictly identical to Circle in that respect.

 

I wish it had similar capabilities as this application: https://screentimelabs.com/

Which works very well, but only per device and only on Android / iOS, not Windows.

 

digitalgriffin

Bit Defender Box 2 has great network access manaagement.  But I personally augment this with Google's Family Link.  Not only will it limit device access based on total hours, and operating hours, it will seek my approval for new apps to be installed.  It also prevents kids from overriding sensitive settings like youtube's and googles content filtering.  It also allows me to lock down apps like Chrome.  I have tried to defeat it multiple times, and short of a factory reset, there's no way to do it.

It's not a replacement for BitDefender Box.   I find it augments it.  I use both as layers of security.