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Forum -> Chinuch, Education & Schooling

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baltomom

Thu, May 07 2020, 8:41 am

My kids got kosher tablets from school that only have access to their school Zooms, but I want them to have a device to be able to access some other things: Zoom for outside-school uses (e.g. learning/storytime with parents) and a couple of websites (turesponse.org, where they can listen to Rabbi Juravel and other stories, etc).

I bought a Fire, thinking that it is a simple tablet that I can protect with Qustodio and a web whitelist. Boy was I wrong! It is preloaded with tons of things, movies, games, appstore, etc. I used the Parental controls to block everything, but if I blocks apps it won't even show the Zoom app (which I installed), and if I allow apps it shows the whole appstore (in addition to Zoom), which I don't want the kids to have access to.

When I leave the web browser, it shows news (that I don't want) and has a way to access other online things (even though technically the main browser is filtered by Qustodio and only allows the websites I whitelisted). So I can block the web browser entirely (through parental controls) but then they can't access even the few websites I want them to.

Help! Is there any way to do this, or is this the wrong device?

Any advice welcome! TIA.

amother

Yellow

Thu, May 07 2020, 8:44 am

Same
I think if you make children accounts it blocks everything. The rest can be seen in administrative account.

baltomom

Thu, May 07 2020, 9:29 am

Bump.

Hashem_Yaazor

Thu, May 07 2020, 4:21 pm

Get an applock like smart app protector and then you can lock anything you want with a password.

Hashem_Yaazor

Thu, May 07 2020, 4:29 pm

Filtering web content will have to be via a filtering service, likely on the router level. I'm still trying to find a good one that whitelists.

I also set up a curfew on ours so it can't be used while I'm sleeping.

amother

Pewter

Fri, May 08 2020, 11:12 am

baltomom wrote:

Did you buy the cheaper version with ads or without ads?

CiCi

Fri, May 08 2020, 2:36 pm

You can't filter out ads and certain other things on fire tablets. There's a kids version too but you still can't filter it like a regular tablet.

baltomom

Sat, May 09 2020, 10:25 pm

Update from OP for others searching for info on this: After doing a lot of internet searching on the topic, I discovered
1. I had ads showing on startup because I purchased the Fire "with special offers", not realizing what that meant. For $15 I was able to turn that off with Amazon.
2. a filter for tablets called Kids Place, which allows the parent to select which apps appear on the tablet and create a whitelist for web browsing. It requires installing GooglePlayStore on the Fire, which was a bit of a job, but I found instructions online that walked me through the process. I have it all set up as I wanted it, and it looks good so far--though my children have not yet used it.
Basic installation of KidsPlace was free; for more advanced functions it seems to cost $1/month.

amother

Peach

Sun, May 10 2020, 12:23 am

There is no way to make it completely safe even with parental controls.
When I realized that, I brought the tablet to TAG and they said they cannot even TAG the device and they don’t recommend it. This was around 2 years ago (maybe less). At that time they recommend a laptop or desktop which they were able to TAG.
Unfortunately, I didn’t listen and learned the hard way when I found my computer savvy child accessing sites that should have been absolutely impossible to get to with the parental controls and time limits I had set up.

amother

Blonde

Sun, May 10 2020, 5:45 am

I really recommend you return them! I bought my kids fire tablets and spent hours setting them up.
I created a kids account blocked all and except for zoom, set age restrictions to 4 years old, set web browsing to be completely off, and guess what
The accessed completely uncensored youtube!!!!
They figured this out on their own (10yr old) that if you go into the zoom app and press “about zoom/privacy info “ there’s a YouTube video embedded in there about zoom. But clicking it will completely open up YouTube !!!! Thank G.d they only googled age appropriate things because literally there was no filter despite all the age filters I Spent hours setting ups !!! I switched to laptops only. Microsoft let’s you create child restrictions that actually work!! You can set up a white list of website you approve and it really blocks all other. No getting to YouTube through zoom on Microsoft. Nope!

baltomom

Sun, May 10 2020, 8:04 pm

Thank you for the warnings!

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