Circle (Home Parental Control & Filtering Device) for $109 AUD (Normally $99 USD), No Ongoing Fees @ CyberSafe House

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mingofmongo on 13/03/2018 - 11:19 cybersafehouse.com (204 clicks)
Last edited 13/03/2018 - 14:17 by 1 other user

I've been thinking about buying a Circle from Amazon for a while now (full name: "Circle With Disney").

I've been tossing up whether to just use the freely-available OpenDNS at home, or invest in a device like Circle which gives greater control. After finally deciding to buy the Circle for about $150AUD from Amazon, it turns out I've waited long enough that there is now an Australian distributor and that they are offering "introductory" pricing of $99AUD with free shipping.

At that price I'll definitely buy one, thought I'd share it with others who may have been considering buying from Amazon like I had been. As bargains go the savings are good (33%!) but it's a niche product so it may only appeal to a handful of other Ozbargainers. Still that's why we're here, right?

Note that this is an 'in home' solution, and doesn't work when your kid leaves the house with a 4G enabled device (they have Circle Go for that, at $6/month for 10 devices)

Technical details: the circle device uses a wired and/or wireless connection to your home network. It uses ARP spoofing to send all internet-destined packets through the Circle device before they go through your router. This makes it very hard to bypass. There is a potential reduction in internet speed through this mechanism but from the reviews I've read it is negligible/imperceptible. However there is one drawback with this device - it connects at only 100Mbit/s. This isn't a problem for most of us as our internet connections are less than this, but still you'd think they'd invest in gigabit. My plan for getting around this is to use the Circle only on a VLAN for kids technology, and leave all other devices (Sonos, Google Homes, game consoles) going through the primary VLAN. Circle isn't VLAN aware so if you put it on its own, it will filter all traffic on that VLAN and be unable to see any other VLANs on the same physical network.

Parental details: Yes I'm aware nothing beats having a good, open, trusting relationship with your kids. And nothing beats having "the conversation". And nothing beats supervising them 110% of the time. But my kids are 5 and 7, and when my daughter wanted to search for "Unicorn pictures" the other day on the iPad I had a sinking feeling that it would take only 3 or 4 clicks before she would see pictures of… well we all know Rule 34, don't we. If we'd had Circle I would have felt a bit more comfortable letting her explore on her own.

Edit: Just reached out to the company to confirm whether price is inc or exc GST - will report back when I have a response
Edit: Looks like the price was accidentally shown as ex GST. I've updated the price in the title to $109 AUD to reflect GST inclusive price.

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  Kanu on 13/03/2018 - 11:47

  i love unicorns…

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  auMouth on 13/03/2018 - 11:59

  +2

  It's ex-GST, so $108.90 to buy.
  It's illegal to advertise ex-GST prices to end-users, so local company CyberSafeHouse are currently displaying and advertising the product illegally, against ATO rules.

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    mingofmongo on 13/03/2018 - 12:51

    Yes I noticed that when I went to buy, and made the same point to them. Just got an email back and they are correcting the pricing to show GST.

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  audreamer on 13/03/2018 - 12:01

  +1

  If this device cannot do HTTPS interception, it is not able to filter the unicorn pictures if the kids search it on Google and other HTTPS enabled websites.

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    mingofmongo on 13/03/2018 - 12:53

    This review here would lead me to think that it does. Maybe. https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32990-…

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    GCSteve on 13/03/2018 - 15:45

    We blocked direct IP access and used DNS interception via IPTables and other software for MAC addresses we didn't have whitelisted to provide some basic filtering.
    Looked into some apps but discovered they didn't address the obvious issues so were more useful for giving parents a false sense of security.
    The kids could bypass them thinking it was a network issue without realising there was filtering in place.

    If you have Google WiFi it has some basic filtering you can apply to selected devices on the network to make unicorn Google searches safer.

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  t3chshopper on 13/03/2018 - 12:18

  I was keen to grab one but read this in a review:

  "One important limitation to keep in mind here as well is that Circle filters per-device not per-user… filters are applied to those devices regardless of who is using them. So if you have a family-shared iPad, or family-shared computer, you’ll either have to keep a fairly permissive set of filters configured for it or be content to toggle the filter settings depending on who is using it."

  This is a showstopper for my situation as our kids don't have their own devices. I'll just stick with my OpenDNS solution for now.

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    asa79 on 13/03/2018 - 13:34

    Most kids now days have their own iPads, especially school aged

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      t3chshopper on 13/03/2018 - 13:35

      Yep. I can see the value in this product. It just doesn't work for my home network/device configuration.

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  zzyss on 13/03/2018 - 12:21

  N.B. if you have a Netgear router check that it isn't already built in. E.g. Orbi has it.

  There are probably other brands too but I dunno off the top of my head.

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  aroundme on 13/03/2018 - 12:25

  Another product to consider: http://koalasafe.com/; Currently listed at $79.99 USD. Developed in Australia.

  You set up a separate WiFi network and connect the LAN port on the device to your router. Devices connect to the newly created WiFi network. You can do time restrictions, categories (shopping, social, operating system, proxies etc), and manually exclude or include sites.

  The device is small - 5cm (length) x 5cm (width) x 2cm (height). I powered it up using the power from the USB port from the Optus supplied router; saving another power pack.

  Satisfied user.

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    asa79 on 13/03/2018 - 13:39

    If its an wireless AP why do you need to have to install the Koala App as well?

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      aroundme on 13/03/2018 - 14:07

      The app is used to configure the Koalasafe (schedule settings etc). This can also be achieved through the web interface.

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    mingofmongo on 13/03/2018 - 14:15

    Looks nifty and I can imaging it working well for most

    We've rolled out Ubiquiti Unifi APs across the house and don't want to go back to having a single central AP, so the koalasafe may not be an option for us.

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  alvian on 13/03/2018 - 13:13

  I searched "unicorn pictures" with Google SafeSearch off, and all I got was unicorn pictures.

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    wfdTamar on 13/03/2018 - 15:05

    Me too and don't they make you sick? So 'My Little Pony'-ish. A multinational marketing conglomerate behind each image.

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  8anddrank on 13/03/2018 - 13:52

  According to the circle website you can "Set individual filter levels for each family memer". My kids love a good meme so will suit them just fine. As an aside - does anyone know how this compares with familyzone?

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  [Deactivated] on 13/03/2018 - 15:41

  when my daughter wanted to search for "Unicorn pictures" the other day on the iPad

  I solved that problem, disable safari & app store.
  ABC Me/Kids, Youirtube Kids/ Sago mini apps/Dr Panda/MyTown/MyPlayHome/TocaBoca?flightradar24 apps are more then enough to keep them busy.

  This is just the same as the OpenDNSsolutoiomn, it just blocks known ip addresses. it doesn't/can't search content. And also people then expect to be safe, when they don't understand the limitations, the get complacent.

  My issues with content blockers is they seem to be US-Centric, there's a lot of mucking around to change it to local views on what's acceptable & what's not.