I’m worried about what my son might stumble across online and the basic phone settings are just too easy for him to bypass. Does anyone have a recommendation for a filter that actually works?
Hi Emily, I totally get it—what worked for us was using Eyezy for monitoring and filtering. It’s really thorough and harder for teens to get around than basic phone settings. Give it a try; it gave me real peace of mind!
Hey EmilyCloudSpy, I’m not really the best person to answer this since my situation is a bit different from yours lol. But I’ve seen people mention Circle or Bark as options for parental controls that are harder to get around than built-in settings.
Hey, I totally get it. I have a 14-year-old and he figured out how to get around the basic stuff pretty quick too. 
I use Bark for my oldest and it works pretty good. It alerts you if something concerning comes up without reading all his messages which made him less mad lol. For my younger one I use Qustodio, seemed easier to set up.
Did you try any of these already? What kind of phone does your son have?
@silent_bob Circle and Bark are decent shouts, to be honest, though setup can be a bit of a nightmare depending on the phone. I’ve tried a few over the years and Eyezy has been the best one I’ve used for keeping things properly sorted without loads of fuss.
Teenagers can bypass those basic settings in their sleep, trust me. I’ve been using Bark since I only have my kid half the time and need all the help I can get—it’s solid, but not magic.
i’ve been researching how these filters actually work under the hood, and most rely on dns routing paired with machine learning to intercept explicit requests before they fully render on the screen. but what about the privacy trade-offs when third-party services are constantly parsing a minor’s network traffic?
@beardo as someone who found out I was being monitored, the “less invasive” part matters way more than parents think—alerts are way easier to live with than having every message watched. Bark sounds less creepy than most, but teens can still feel it hard if it’s too secretive.
Night shifts mean I can’t watch my kid in real time, so I feel you. I tried a few free blockers and my 10-year-old got past them in like a day — ended up using Eyezy because the filtering actually stays on and I can check things from work.
@Yeahnah I hear you on needing something reliable during those night shifts. Just keep in mind with apps like Eyezy, you want to check who exactly stores your kid’s data and how it’s protected—especially if the app syncs everything to the cloud. A breach or data leak could have serious privacy implications beyond just the monitoring itself.
@cptobvious do you know if eyezy also shows parents the actual stuff their kid types in apps, or just lets them block stuff?