When it comes to websites that require content inspection, we resolve the DNS requests to a web proxy which does the content filtering.
To get around the issue of the average consumer not being able to change their DNS settings, we are working on an application that will automate (login to router, change DNS) configuration. Our intent is to cover the top routers in the market which we believe will make it easier than ever for people to use Securly.
Incidentally, we started off with the hardware box idea and moved towards a cloud based approach because (1) its much harder for a startup to manage the complexity of being hardware based (2) users have to spend money upfront to try us out (3) investors tend to be hardware-averse. To our knowledge, a hardware box does not provide any significant advantage over the cloud based service that we have come up with.
Our key differentiators are (1) Being able to filter inappropriate content on trusted websites (Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc) that children use frequently. Domain based blocking allows or denies the entire website. But cannot for example, filter out a "bad" page on Wikipedia without blocking the entire domain (2) Being able to provide easy parental access. Parents login to Securly via our website and immediately get unfiltered Internet access.
Your feedback is well taken. A couple of things (1) Based on our experience, we ran into a lot of empirical evidence that parents don't take the lead in talking to their kids about what they might run into on the Internet (2) The pro-choice argument works well for teens who are well aware of whats out there. Our intent is to protect younger children who might be accidentally exposed to adult content before their parents have had a chance to talk to them about it (or are too young to visit these sites even after such a discussion). Incidentally, the trigger for this idea was when my co-founder saw his 6-year old cousin accidentally viewing an age-inappropriate video on YouTube on an iPad while his parents were away. That's when we looked for solutions for "safe YouTube" out there and were surprised to see how sorry the parental "control" solutions out there were.
Thanks for the feedback. We are in the process of revamping our website to include FAQ -- but we felt like we could get away with launching on HN without it given the high density of early adopters here.
Thanks Cliff. Yes, SafeEyes (we are ex McAfee as well) and similar software based solutions are painful to manage across devices. We are already working towards addressing the DNS setting issue by not only providing instructions on our site but also coming up with an application that automatically configures the wireless routers. We believe this will make it easier than ever for people to use Securly.
To get around the issue of the average consumer not being able to change their DNS settings, we are working on an application that will automate (login to router, change DNS) configuration. Our intent is to cover the top routers in the market which we believe will make it easier than ever for people to use Securly.
Incidentally, we started off with the hardware box idea and moved towards a cloud based approach because (1) its much harder for a startup to manage the complexity of being hardware based (2) users have to spend money upfront to try us out (3) investors tend to be hardware-averse. To our knowledge, a hardware box does not provide any significant advantage over the cloud based service that we have come up with.