Show HN: Securly - Keep your kids safe on your home network

[bmadhu]

http://www.securly.com

To keep kids safe online, we felt it wasn’t enough anymore to rely simply on blocking websites (domain filtering). We also need to protect them on trusted social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia. We couldn’t find any solution that does this for the entire home network. We are two security hackers who have worked in the enterprise firewall space for several years and felt this was an important problem to solve.

The video on our front page gives you a pretty good idea of what we do. You can also use us as a free premium DNS server by pointing your DNS to the IPs here:

http://www.securly.com/setup

We would love some honest feedback on what we have built so far.

[ja27]

It sounds decent (but would still like more detail about how it content filters with DNS). But my concern would be that the average potential customer isn't willing or able to go change their DNS settings. A lot of parents we know don't even know their router password anymore.

I think there's an untapped gold mine there for the first company that comes out with an idiot-proof content filtering system for parents and gets in into Walmart, Staples, Best Buy, etc. I'm thinking either a replacement wireless router or a wired filter that goes between their current wifi router and broadband modem. It's got to do as much auto configuration as possible. Or if Verizon or other broadband providers would just offer it as part of their service package. For another $19.95 a month they'll proxy filter your internet content.

[bmadhu]

When it comes to websites that require content inspection, we resolve the DNS requests to a web proxy which does the content filtering.

To get around the issue of the average consumer not being able to change their DNS settings, we are working on an application that will automate (login to router, change DNS) configuration. Our intent is to cover the top routers in the market which we believe will make it easier than ever for people to use Securly.

Incidentally, we started off with the hardware box idea and moved towards a cloud based approach because (1) its much harder for a startup to manage the complexity of being hardware based (2) users have to spend money upfront to try us out (3) investors tend to be hardware-averse. To our knowledge, a hardware box does not provide any significant advantage over the cloud based service that we have come up with.

[cliffcrosland]

My family uses the SafeEyes filter on each machine, but I think this is a much more interesting approach as it helps tackle filtering for kids' smartphones as well.

One small piece of feedback: Could you give a little bit more info on how to set up the two DNS servers? Perhaps an example or some links to walkthroughs for popular routers?

[bmadhu]

Thanks Cliff. Yes, SafeEyes (we are ex McAfee as well) and similar software based solutions are painful to manage across devices. We are already working towards addressing the DNS setting issue by not only providing instructions on our site but also coming up with an application that automatically configures the wireless routers. We believe this will make it easier than ever for people to use Securly.

[pdenya]

That video is OK. I'd rather see a plain text description of what it is exactly that you're blocking or not blocking.

[bmadhu]

Thanks for the feedback. We intend to revamp our site to show each use-case in the front page itself.

[JamesBell]

2nd that. Needs FAQ.

[bmadhu]

Thanks for the feedback. We are in the process of revamping our website to include FAQ -- but we felt like we could get away with launching on HN without it given the high density of early adopters here.

[ishake]

I'd assume that not all parents would be able to set this up. A simplified step by step may help. A PDF or video should work.

[abstractbill]

The securely guys demoed their technology for me a while back - it is very impressive. Congrats guys!

[bmadhu]

Thanks for all the support, Bill! Really appreciate it.

[mitrick2]

how do you all differentiate from OpenDNS's family config? I've used that with pretty good success so far, but always open to improvements.

[bmadhu]

Our key differentiators are (1) Being able to filter inappropriate content on trusted websites (Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, etc) that children use frequently. Domain based blocking allows or denies the entire website. But cannot for example, filter out a "bad" page on Wikipedia without blocking the entire domain (2) Being able to provide easy parental access. Parents login to Securly via our website and immediately get unfiltered Internet access.

[tjlytle]

Would be interested in knowing how you're doing the content filtering. Returning a filtering proxy server in place of the actual server?

[bmadhu]

Correct. But only for the sites that are known to have content that might be age inappropriate.

[bashzor]

In general, I am a hugely pro-choice. If the kids think they are up for that kind of websites, let them be. The odds that they see something they'd rather not have seen are a thousand to one. Sure, not impossible and there will be plenty of stories, but it's not worth it to censor the internet like this.

Better talk with your children what the dangers are. Tell them how burglars find that you are on holidays and then break in, or how your Facebook images could be abused by that bully to make you look stupid. It'll make them be more careful, and you needn't use securly to block Facebook's photo upload feature. And yeah, you can also take the lead on talking about sex, better to have them hear it from a trusted source first hand. (I appreciated my mom's effort to raise me, let's say, aware of how stuff works.)

Also, asking people to do something rather than demanding or prohibiting, works always better[1]. If you tell your kids they shouldn't do something, they're more likely to experiment but decide it's better not to, than when you prohibit it and they're going to try and find holes. And believe me, try they will, often either finding a way or having someone fix it for them.

Lastly, I know someone who had this kind of block on his pc. Dutch kids, and I guess any, aren't frugal about swear words like "fuck". The kid who had this filter installed couldn't see a significant part of the forum since it blocks the entire page over that word, and he missed parts of discussions and conversations. Then someone tried to be funny and simply put "fuck" in 1pt white text in his signature, almost entirely blocking him from the forum. In the end of course, he found a way around the block. There are always ways.

I know this is your business and you're not going to stop for this kind of personal morals, but I wanted this to be out there. It's certainly nothing personal!

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/4e/cached_selves/ 9th paragraph.

[bmadhu]

Your feedback is well taken. A couple of things (1) Based on our experience, we ran into a lot of empirical evidence that parents don't take the lead in talking to their kids about what they might run into on the Internet (2) The pro-choice argument works well for teens who are well aware of whats out there. Our intent is to protect younger children who might be accidentally exposed to adult content before their parents have had a chance to talk to them about it (or are too young to visit these sites even after such a discussion). Incidentally, the trigger for this idea was when my co-founder saw his 6-year old cousin accidentally viewing an age-inappropriate video on YouTube on an iPad while his parents were away. That's when we looked for solutions for "safe YouTube" out there and were surprised to see how sorry the parental "control" solutions out there were.

[gadders]

This is definitely needed. My six year old has a tablet and I dread the day she sees something "rude" on the internet.

[bashzor]

I see; that's indeed a good idea. Perhaps it'd also be an idea to tell parents about the intended age range?

[ja27]

I generally trust my kids and have had the appropriate content talk with both of them several times. But they're kids. My 8 y/o boy will still search for "sexy girls" sometimes. If it would just show him swimsuit models or Playboy-level material, I'd be happy enough. But with any search, he's only a couple clicks away from the some of the most hardcore fetish porn ever created.

I still prefer monitoring / reporting to filtering / blocking though. It's more important for me to know what they're looking at and be able to talk to them about it than it is for me to block everything that might be offensive.

[malr]

I am a teacher and I'm excited about Securly! My observations: I usually visit students in their homes for after-school tutoring. The kids are generally preteens, too young to be exploring uncharted territories on their own, even if the parents had the "talk". In fact, almost all the parents I work with are very concerned about their kids coming across inappropriate content on web through computers and portable devices. They would like to delay this kind of "acquired worldly knowledge" as long as they can. I feel the same way as a parent myself. As to what age is appropriate, it is unique to each child and the family. Keep in mind that the decision making part of the brain does not really mature until late preteen age. All my students have special needs and parents need to be extra cautious. I strongly hope that Securly finds its place in our homes and schools and the parents and schools must start taking proactive measures by thinking about new safeguards to put in place.

[unimpressive]

On the one hand I agree.

On the other hand: http://xkcd.com/751/ makes a very convincing point.[0]

[0]: As a kid who was basically raised on Video Games and Internet forums, this comic isn't even really exaggerated.

PS:

Parents, if you really want to do your kids a favor, let them know right now that the Internet never forgets, and that you should keep this in mind when you say things.