Innovative New Start-Up Providing Internet Parental Controls that ISPs Aren’t
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) August 07, 2013 -- The growing sense of entitlement that children have around their home internet access is quickly becoming a major concern for this generation of parents, and in the absence of any real offerings from the ISPs, WebCurfew’s cloud-based solution is resonating with parents tired of struggling with traditional device-centric parental control solutions.
“Parents have a right to expect proper internet parental control solutions from their ISPs,” says Rod da Silva, WebCurfew’s founder and author of the Digital Loitering blog dedicated to helping parents struggling with their kids' tech-addiction. “But ISPs haven’t been in a hurry to provide them because their businesses thrive when kids stay online longer.” WebCurfew fills the void by providing a parent-friendly solution that is both router and ISP independent. Any customer of any ISP can use WebCurfew to create internet timer blocks for their kid’s wifi devices.
The WebCurfew website provides a 100 percent cloud-based service that enables parents to regain control over the amount of time their children spend on the internet. The free WebCurfew service shows parents every connected device in their home and gives them the ability to individually turn internet access on or off, in real-time over the web, like a virtual light switch. The service’s unique home automation approach ensures that any device that connects to the internet through the router can be easily controlled with nothing more than a browser.
Unlike every other parental control offering available today, WebCurfew’s service does not directly interact with the internet-enabled devices it is controlling (e.g., PCs, laptops, iPods, iPads, game consoles, IPTVs, mobile phones, etc.). Specifically, parents no longer need to be IT pros to implement effective internet parental controls because WebCurfew’s web-based approach requires no software to download, install, configure or administer on any of the devices. Instead, WebCurfew delivers a ‘home automation’ solution to internet parental controls by managing the single common access point that all internet-enabled devices connect through – the home internet router.
“You would expect that the ISPs who provide people’s access to the internet would also provide adequate parental control solutions to help parents manage their children’s online time,” says da Silva. “But they don’t. Go to any major broadband ISP website and search for ‘internet parental controls’ and about all you will find is ‘advice’ around how to talk to your child about using the internet, and an antiquated piece of downloadable Windows software that is practically useless in a modern multi-device internet home,” he says.
After 4 years in development including a 2.5 year private trial period, WebCurfew’s web service publicly launched last week with support for over 100 consumer-based routers from today’s most popular brand name manufacturers, as well as major ISP provided routers such as those that ship with the Verizon FiOS service. This means WebCurfew can immediately support the routers that millions of people worldwide already have in their home. Using the free home internet parental control service with its intuitive ‘power button’ metaphor is a matter of visiting the site, creating an account, providing the make and model of your router, putting the router into remote management mode, and then authorizing the service to manage the router on your behalf.
To learn more about WebCurfew or try out its free service, visit https://www.WebCurfew.com .
Rod da Silva, WebCurfew founder and concerned internet parent, HIPOM Inc., https://www.WebCurfew.com, (312) 859-2121, [email protected]
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