topic Re: Parental control help in Broadband

Parental control help

SimonH71 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:40:40 GMT

We have recently had Sky superfast and the WIFI max installed. One reason was to gain better parental control. Our 17yo daughter likes to sit up all night on the internat to the early hours and spend all day in bed while we are out at work, rather than getting up and finding herself a job.

So i set up a Profile and schedule for her devices, to pause her internet from midnight. Great i thought.

So her devices were Iphone14, her Smart TV, laptop, and a Nintendo DS.

Other devices on the network are various Alexa devices, another couple of TVs, Ring doorbell etc which i set up on our 'Home' network.

Mine and my parnters phones(both Android) and laptops on our own profile.

Basically, every device allocated to a Profile.

After a week or 2 i began to notice another Iphone on the network, unallocated to a profile, so i paused it indefinitely.

then it appeared again, and in the device details it says its an iphone 14, i paused it again.

So then, she decides whe wants in Ipad, so buys it with her birthday money, this was last weekend, and the ipad arrived on Monday, so i added it it to her Profile and schedule.

Now, this week, again, i have begun to see a second Ipad appear, then a third. we nao hav 4 Ipads and 3 Iphones all connected.

so i check the details of each device in my controls app and that says each device has a unique MAC address and IP address, which initially suggests to me that they are all different devices.

I am aware that use of a VPN will change your IP address but thought the MAC address was fixed, that was until i do abit of digging, and found that IOS provides a feature called Private Wifi Address that randomizes the MAC address for each WIFI network it connects to.

It initially got me thinking, if this is the case, she can just log out of WiFi and log in again, IOS randomizes the MAC address and the WiFI network thinks its a new device. She can keep doing this to bypass the controls of her schedule.

But then, i thought, maybe i have inadvertently caused the issue by pausing her device(she would then try to log in again, with a randomized MAC address.

So my questions are

1. Can anyone advise RE the Apple products/IOS and MAC addresses

2. Rather than control her downtime schedule, is there a way of defining which devices are to have access?

3. Have i got it completely wrong and look like a rambling nutter

Re: Parental control help

JimM1 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 14:27:57 GMT

@SimonH71 You are completely sane, and you have NO chance fighting the radmized mac feature, only way dedicated AP that the units connect to and control that with the Parental controls, shut that down daughter only gets to connect to that AP point and nothing else, different ssid name and password for the AP, and it has to be connected Ethernet. You can try sky support to see if there is an inbiuilt feature but do not use sky Max at all! If your daughter is aware off your password for the sky hub then you need to change that so all your devices need to change and you can NEVER let her know it.... If she goes and reset's the hub you will know as everything will be scrambled and not connected!

Re: Parental control help

SimonH71 — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:06:22 GMT

Unless of course we can persuade her to disable the feature.

I would switch the bloody router off when we go to bed but why should i then have the hassle of reconnecting in the morning.

Bloody kids

Re: Parental control help

TimmyBGood — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:35:46 GMT

@SimonH71 wrote:

I would switch the bloody router off when we go to bed but why should i then have the hassle of reconnecting in the morning.

A crude but potentially effective option is to add a separate wireless access point (not another router) on a timer power socket. Change the WiFi and Admin credentials on the Sky Hub and give the young person the password for the AP signal.

Of course if they have a data allowance on their own cellular device(s) then they are going to be online anyway....

Re: Parental control help

SimonH71 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 09:18:32 GMT

So i connect the Wireless acces point to the router, the router sees the WAP as a device, i presume i can pause and wake it as i would any other connected device?

She would then have the password to the access point, and we change the password on the router?

Re: Parental control help

jamesn123 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 09:46:00 GMT

@SimonH71

Or just have the AP itself on a schedule in its settings/just switch it off at the plug.

Re: Parental control help

JimM1 — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 09:47:11 GMT

@SimonH71 That's the way, may not have full use and depends on how for the AP powers the wireless signal about, so may get some blow back about i cannot roam the whole house because you are restricting my wi-fi, anyway no doubt the bedroom is the no go area for all but the user! Wi-Fi and parental controls is one big minefield, no doubt there is going to be something else heading down the slippery slope!

Re: Parental control help

TimmyBGood — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 09:52:03 GMT

@SimonH71 wrote:

So i connect the Wireless acces point to the router, the router sees the WAP as a device, i presume i can pause and wake it as i would any other connected device?

Just physically switch off the WAP as desired: this has the advantage of not requiring any router changes.