Let’s face it – your kids are getting older, and so are mine – and with age comes curiosity. And while they are busy learning or playing games behind their screens, they have access to a seemingly unlimited amount of distasteful content in the palms of their hands – and it’s not hard to find.
The good news is there’s a simple way to block a ton of inappropriate sites in just a few steps by using a free service by Cisco. (That’s Cisco the company, not Sisqo the rapper – whatever happened to that guy?). Anyway, here are the steps you need to follow, best of all, no account setup, no complicated settings to change, and nothing to download – it couldn’t be any simpler to protect your kids.
1. Router settings
Open the settings to your router via a web browser, and log in. If you need further information part of my other blog post covers this: Click here!
Example URLs: http://192.168.0.1 or http://192.168.1.254
2. Find DNS server settings
Search for some mention of DNS address. You might have to change the option from dynamic to static DNS
See below:
3. Change DNS settings
Now change the DNS options for both Primary DNS (and Secondary if possible)
– 208.67.222.123
– 208.67.220.123
4. Test your internet
That’s it! Now after a few minutes, you should have a more kid-friendly internet at home. To test to make sure this is working, open up a web browser and navigate to https://welcome.opendns.com/
You should see a message like this:
Another website to test your settings that Cisco set up is: www.internetbadguys.com
This time you should see the following:
Congratulations! You’re helping protect your kids from a large list of bad websites across your entire network! This works no matter what device your kids use, iPads, Laptops, Phones, etc… as long as they are hooked up to your WiFi or directly connected to your internet this will work.
