I've tried following the thread here, testing on browsers and older computers without TLS 1.3, or disabling it, or VPN, or Apple private relay. But whilst the groups and iOS controlling App and moderate filtering was working fine (it would seem) for the first 2 months of my broadband contract with EE (since October 2024), it stopped working over Christmas as we only found out after one child followed a dubious link.
I have been on the phone with EE three times in the last 24 hours and explained how disappointing this is, on their instruction I have reset the router to factory, uninstalled and reinstalled the app, re-paired it to the router, left the app uninstalled and router and BT box off for an hour (as engineer instructed a reset/unsync). Deleted all the groups and devices and redefined them in the app from scratch, but even after all of this none of the DNS/Parental filtering is working.
The only way to get DNS filtering (or a kind) to work, is to setup an old router on the LAN, put it in charge of DHCP, and get it to use OpenDNS addresses for parental filtering. So this technology clearly still works with my array of browsers and operating systems, but the BT/EE equivalent, on their DNS addresses they own is not filtering, or not taking 'Parent Controls: On' or moderate, and implementing it via the backend services when paired with its inbuilt DNS settings. It would be better, in my view that EE took a leaf out of OpenDNS setup, where there are specific DNS IPs you can use that can never be set below 'family/moderate', and then only update people's routers, to no filter, with different DNS IPs, if that is specifically what they opt down to, then there wouldn't be such a big consequence of the technology breaking when backends and apps go haywire.
Aside from that pausing devices works, when the traffic routes through the EE router (presumably by MAC address), but parental filtering is broken and seems impossible to recover. At one point over Christmas I think one of my tests showed that even on EE cellular, no broadband, (where I have the parental filter on), it was not working, but that now seems restored (or a mistaken test).
To add insult to injury, there is no way to set any of this on the web server on the router itself, it has to be done via the app, there is no way to set OpenDNS on the router as the preferred DNS service, and there is no way to block DNS traffic going to other addresses/dns services, from client devices on the network, from choosing their own, e.g. 8.8.8.8 (I'm not sure, when it was working, if this was blocked or not - according to a previous post I made, I had tested this - https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Broadband-Landline/Parental-Control-Block-List-Details/m-p/1460550/hig...)
I'm considering going back to my 5 year + old router, with OpenWRT on it, so that I have all the control mentioned, but then I will loose the features of the new wireless technologies and the ease of the quite helpful pause/scheduled pause option.
Can anyone update on what the state of things is? And does anyone still have a working setup? Because EE told me 'no one else is reporting this issue' - to which I asked them if they had a 'lab' where they have the same router as me, with similar settings and can verify its working... and they said no..
