Show HN: Securly - Keep your kids safe on your home network • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Securly - Keep your kids safe on your home network

#21

Post by bmadhu » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 2:14 AM UTC

tjlytle wrote: post #20

bmadhu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Would be interested in knowing how you're doing the content filtering. Returning a filtering proxy server in place of the actual server?

Correct. But only for the sites that are known to have content that might be age inappropriate.

Re: Show HN: Securly - Keep your kids safe on your home network

#22

Post by ja27 » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 3:26 AM UTC

It sounds decent (but would still like more detail about how it content filters with DNS). But my concern would be that the average potential customer isn't willing or able to go change their DNS settings. A lot of parents we know don't even know their router password anymore.

I think there's an untapped gold mine there for the first company that comes out with an idiot-proof content filtering system for parents and gets in into Walmart, Staples, Best Buy, etc. I'm thinking either a replacement wireless router or a wired filter that goes between their current wifi router and broadband modem. It's got to do as much auto configuration as possible. Or if Verizon or other broadband providers would just offer it as part of their service package. For another $19.95 a month they'll proxy filter your internet content.

Re: Show HN: Securly - Keep your kids safe on your home network

#23

Post by ja27 » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 3:34 AM UTC

bashzor wrote: post #11

In general, I am a hugely pro-choice. If the kids think they are up for that kind of websites, let them be. The odds that they see something they'd rather not have seen are a thousand to one. Sure, not impossible and there will be plenty of stories, but it's not worth it to censor the internet like this. Better talk with your children what the dangers are. Tell them how burglars find that you are on holidays and then…

I generally trust my kids and have had the appropriate content talk with both of them several times. But they're kids. My 8 y/o boy will still search for "sexy girls" sometimes. If it would just show him swimsuit models or Playboy-level material, I'd be happy enough. But with any search, he's only a couple clicks away from the some of the most hardcore fetish porn ever created.

I still prefer monitoring / reporting to filtering / blocking though. It's more important for me to know what they're looking at and be able to talk to them about it than it is for me to block everything that might be offensive.

Re: Show HN: Securly - Keep your kids safe on your home network

#24

Post by bmadhu » Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 7:48 PM UTC

ja27 wrote: post #22

It sounds decent (but would still like more detail about how it content filters with DNS). But my concern would be that the average potential customer isn't willing or able to go change their DNS settings. A lot of parents we know don't even know their router password anymore. I think there's an untapped gold mine there for the first company that comes out with an idiot-proof content filtering system for parents and…

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.