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Weird problem with parental controls disappearing on T3200M
I'm trying to use the parental controls on the T3200M.
Looking in the "Advanced Settings" screen, the menu item on the left for parental controls was not there at all.
The admin home screen showed "Filtering/Blocking: Disabled", so I contacted Telus Support and they suggested resetting the router to factory settings. We reset the router and the home screen changed to "Filtering/Blocking: Enabled", and the parental controls menu item in the advanced settings was available.
I fiddled with it for a bit, only to come back the next morning and find that it had gone back to "Disabled" and the parental controls menu item disappeared again. No way to enable it. Super frustrating!
Anyone know what's happening here? How can I get access to parental controls?
(No one else would be messing with it, my kids aren't old enough to know what a router is)
Thanks.
Hi there,
I have an update. Working with a couple resources from TELUS support management and development they have confirmed that the TELUS My Wi-Fi app is the supported replacement for the parental controls in the T3200M modem. This change is effective with the last firmware upgrade to the modem, version 31.164L.22.
Reverting to firmware 31.164L.18 or lower, through a factory reset of the modem, will restore the original Blocking/Filtering section with parental controls in the T3200M modem, however the workaround would be temporary as the modem will continue to pickup the latest firmware from TELUS and perform an automatic update. The new firmware is more secure than .18 so this is likely not a recommended solution.
The parental controls in the TELUS My Wi-Fi app have some know limitations compared to the original T3200M-based controls:
- Scheduling: Some devices cannot be paused or included in the child profiles (Ex TELUS Optik STB). TELUS Optik PVRs work fine.
- Filtering/Blocking: There is no definable web or protocol filtering, other than the generic option to filter out Adult content based on age ratings.
To filter specific apps, such as YouTube, TikTok or Pokemon. If you own an Apple device with Family Sharing setup, there is a relatively new setting called Screen Time that has proven to be an absolute life savior for our family's balancing of digital time: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT208982
There are similar options provided by Microsoft for Windows and Android (https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103340?hl=en), but I am less familiar with them and do not want to stray to far off thread here.
Hope this helps.
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- There is another option. Use a 3rd party router. Ever since I got rid of the Telus modem alot of issues just disappeared.....
- The parental controls have disappeared once again, even after the factory reset. This is now the second time in less than a week. I just spoke with tech support again and she said this is the first time they've ever heard of it and nobody has reported this issue before! So I guess jujubehead and my report didn't count! Anybody else's parental controls disappeared in their GUI advanced setup?
I just tried to do the same thing today (Dec 4) and encountered exactly the same issues. As mentioned, I had set parental controls back in March, at the start of Covid, to control specific websites on my kids' devices. So you are not the only one. We now use chromebooks and Windows machines. The Telus My WIFI app is unhelpful, as it only allows me to block a certain device, which is not my goal. My goal is to let my kids play games on their ipads, without them being able to google search or You Tube watch, without my direct supervision. And as parents, one keystroke misstep, can bring up some nasty google search stuff. I am now waiting for tech support see the next steps .
I have also lost the parental controls. I have actually lost all the Blocking/Filtering section seen here circled in yellow:
I am currently on the phone holding in the 1 hour support queue to see why this is happening and if it can be resolved.
Once thing I noticed under my Upgrade History was that my T3200M's firmware was upgraded in September from 31.164L.18 to 22. This could be the culprit:
09/23/2020 12:43 AM ACS Complete31.164L.22 I will keep you posted.
Same Problem. The entire Blocking/Filtering section at the top of Advanced Setup is simply gone on new firmware.
These features are extremely important!
- The same thing happened to me just today!! I logged on and out several times and turned the modem off and on. Nothing. Called tech support and they did a factory reset. I have it back now but this is often telus' common fix for almost everything. It's frustrating because it knocks out all the parental controls etc. Resetting modem should be a last resort, not the first solution.
