Can I monitor which sites a child is accessing with T3200 router?

[Blorchito]

I've looked through the router settings and I can't see an ability to monitor which sites are being visited. I do see the Parental Controls but that only blocks sites a parent already knows about. Also, I have tried to block two websites across the whole network with Website Blocking but it doesn't work.

Thanks

[Nighthawk]

Most routers will not have the feature to monitor what is being accessed. You need something more enterprise grade for that. You'll also find most kids can get around parental controls also. You could try installing software on your kids computer to monitor what they access but you still won't be able to block everything. If it's a tablet or phone, then it's much harder.

There are countless sites out there that have content that parents may object to their kids seeing. Depending on the age of your kids, they may have already seen some of that content as well, either at home or elsewhere. Often the best courses of action if your kids are old enough is to discuss inappropriate content with them, why they shouldn't be looking at it, and consequences if they do.

[Blorchito]

Thanks Nighthawk. My situation is more complex. The situation is a child accessing online content that is harmful to their mental health and they don't have the maturity to honour a promise not to visit those sites.

[polecat]

@Blorchito  Your between a rock an a  hard place. But is it not possible to do this on their search engines (google - firefox). They would probably sort the that out quickly. The internet is available all over the place maybe try to talk to a person that has good programing knowledge. I don't have your worry so good luck. Polecat

[NFtoBC · Accepted solution]

You might need to seek tools on the device itself, rather than the modem. There are a variety of child-minding software applications which may better meet your needs. 

[jgg123]

I know other routers have this ability. On my Linksys dashboard I can block sites on individual devices, ie my daughter can't watch YouTube on the fire stick but I can on my phone/laptop etc

[giantbrownguy]

Like @polecat said, you're likely looking for more of a monitoring setup, which is not typically built into a router. You can have the ability to blacklist and whitelist sites, but if you need to see a record of sites, you need something that can full on track that data. Depending of if you're using Windows or a Mac, you might be able to set up some sort of mobile device management so you can track it, but that would take a bit of work on your part. 

This website has a list of some options (though I cannot speak to their quality): https://famisafe.wondershare.com/parental-control/computer-monitoring-software-for-parents.html

Another option - if your child is using an iOS devices (iPad or iPhone) you could set it up with parental controls and put heavy restrictions on what sites they can visit, whitelisting things as they need. https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201304

[giantbrownguy]

Sorry, credit to both @polecat and @Nighthawk .

[frugalmumma]

Not sure if you have found a solution. We have kids that are 7, 9, 10,11,12 yrs old... and run windows 10 on our OS. We've been able to use Microsoft Family features to lock down what the kids can see, how long they can use the internet, what apps they can use, age restricted content, websites we can block, games sites we can block, websites and content we can allow and a whole host of other features.  While we use chrome, most of the features work. I think if you want to ensure all features work from their microsoft family suite - you may need to use microsoft edge.  This is free to use and will cost you your time in learning what you can do, or can't as far as configuring goes. However, having said that... if you are not microsoft based... I am sure there are some other great sites or apps or hardware that may be able to help you. Unfortunately, we just use Microsoft family as it works for us so cannot recommend any specific sites sorry.  Right now I am trying to research limiting bandwith as apposed to their sites!

[Benenz]

I'm not sure if this is possible. I had several unsuccessful attempts to monitor which sites a child is accessing with a router. Therefore, I use  , here you can watch not only your child's search history but also block these sites.