The Complete Guide on Monitoring and Parental Control on a Chromebook and Disabling Incognito Mode - Part 2

[This is a 5-part series. Here are links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.]

Problem Statement:

Know what web sites my daughter wastes time on when she is at home with a school managed Google Suite account (because her school has monitoring of their own) without me spending too much time or spend any money on new hardware devices.

Option 1: Control at the router and network level

1.2 Parental Control on the Router

Another place to implement parental control is right on your router, whether it is a modem/router combo device or a separate WiFi router you connect to the ISP modem.

Most routers sold today offer some kind of parental control. Even my five-year-old Motorola model/router has it. However, with so many variety of makes and models of routers out there, the level of parental control you get is a total YMMV (Your Mile May Vary). Generally you login to the admin console of the router (normally just type 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 into your browser address bar), and create your custom rules there.

So what kind of parental control might be available on a router?

Control Internet Access at the Device Level

Pretty much all routers will allow you to disable Internet access based on device MAC address (a unique id for any network device) because that is an essential function of a router. Most routers will also allow you to create device level schedules that determines when a device can get online (even my 5-year old Motorola router has that).

Filter and Block Contents at the Device Level

Again, most routers today will allow you to block websites at a device level, and possibly with a schedule so certain websites can only be visited during allowed time (my 5-year old Motorola router does that). This helps, for example, if you don't want your kids watching YouTube all night. However, the duty is on you to identify all the websites you want to block or control, and if your kids are smart enough to find other video web sites (such as dailymotion or disneynow) that you are not aware of, you are in trouble (once you find out, of course, they are now in trouble 😉).

Some router might offer list of websites or even categories you can select from. But these are rare.

Control How Much Time a Device Can Stay Online

This is a more flexible and advanced control, because now you don't have to specify fixed schedules on when your kids can get online. They have X amount of time to have Internet access for that day, and they can choose to use it anytime they want. However, this is an overall Internet access control, not control based on which website they visit. So you can't say, for example, 15 minutes on Instagram each day.

Some routers offer this capability right on the router, such as this cheap TP-Link AC1750 WiFi Router for $57.99.

TP-Link AC1750 Dual Band Gigbit WiFi Router 

Keep Track of What Websites Your Kids Are Visiting

Knowing what websites my kids are visiting is the most beneficial feature for me for my daughter's case. Some routers offer to keep a history of all websites visited (can be filtered by device), such as some NetGear routers as described in this How-To article.

Most NetGear router you can buy today seems to offload the website visit history function to the Circle App on your smart phone (you just have to go through the hassle to download the app and configure it), such as this NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1750 WiFi Router for $88.

NEGEAR Nighthawk AC1750 Gigbit WiFi Router

Since I don't intend to buy any new devices and spend more time reconfiguring my entire home network, this is not a solution for me.

You might ask, what is this Circle App thing? That naturally leads to the next possible solution, an additional monitoring/control device on your home network.

1.3 Circle with Disney

So what is Circle with Disney?

Circle with Disney is a physical box that wirelessly connects to your home network to monitor, control and report on internet activity.

I can't figure out why this device has Disney's name associated with it. It is made by a company in Oregon. Customers do feel a bit safer when they see Disney's name.

This is an add-on device to your network that allows you to manage the following through the MyCircle app on your smart phone:

Basic features:

• Online content filters per device from existing categories.
• Time online tracking per device and stats (graphs).
• Breakdown of which sites were visited per device throughout the day.

Premium features:

• Limit online time per device.
• Bedtime control (basically scheduling Internet off)
• Pause Internet for a device from your app.
• Location tracking for mobile devices. (This is more for convenience of stats in one place. Your mobile devices can already do this by their own.)
• Rewards of extra online time (Basically the same as you increasing allowed time online.)

Although this is not a solution for me because I don't intend to spend extra money, this does sound like a great solution. The Circle for Disney device sells for $99.99.

Circle for Disney

Before you pull the trigger and buy this device though, be aware that there is a catch:
What you are buying for $99.99 is the device and a one-year subscription which includes all the premium services. After one-year subscription is up, you will have to pay $9.99/month to keep using the premium services. My understanding is that you should still be able to get the basic features for free. And you should be able to obtain the other features from other means most likely for free.

1.4 Google Mesh WiFi

Google Mesh WiFi is a product to improve WiFi signals at your home especially for those spotty areas. It is also a WiFi router so you don't need a separate WiFi router solution. I already have Google Mesh WiFi at my house. A 3-pack (nodes) Google Mesh WiFi sells for $239.

If you already have Google Mesh WiFi or are planning to get them to improve WiFi signals anyway, you should definitely take advantage of the parental control functions that come with it for free.

The control and monitoring happens on a smart phone app you download to manage your Google WiFi. Inside the app there's a function called Family WiFi. There are four main features:

1. You can group devices with labels and then monitoring and control at a group level.
2. You can apply Google's SafeSearch filter on a device or a group of devices to block adult web sites automatically (same SafeSearch in Google search engine).
3. Schedule Internet time-outs. For example, shutdown Internet access to a device or a group of devices at 9:30pm during weekdays and 10:30pm at weekends.
4. Pause/Un-pause Wi-Fi access on demand directly from your own smart phone.

To read more about the Family WiFi features, you can read this Google Help Page.

But there is one feature lacking, website visit history. Google actually sell this as a privacy feature as described in this Google Help Page. We all know that Google is already tracking everything about you, your search history from the search engine, your schedule from your calendars, your hobbies from your emails, places you visit from your smart phone geo data, and your conversations at home from Google Home voice assistants. So please stop pretending and just give us the website monitoring feature for heaven's sake!

I take full advantage of the Google Mesh WiFi's Family WiFi parental control features. But because of the lack of history logs, this is also not a solution to my problem.

By the way, if you do want to get Google Mesh WiFi and also want to use Google Home, make sure to read my other blog post about how to make them work together.

That's it for today's post. Make sure to read:

Part 3 of the Complete Guide

You will get paint on you when you paint, no matter how careful you are.

BTW: The easiest way to remember my blog address is http://lanny.lannyland.com