Security Tools are Broken - No a hard rest of the hub won't help

[lilster]

Hello All, I have read so many of your posts I feel like one of the family.

I am helping a friend with their BT broadband issues as they have already been driven insane by the outsourced helpdesk model. I have logged a call with BT and am slowly being ground down too. I'm posting here for help but also in case anyone is having the same issue we could form a self help goup 😉

Short version of the story, skipping a very long tale of annoying helpdesk encounters:

• BT parental controls management was not working, after many hours it was fixed but then started getting unrelaible performance and some webpages would not connect with a TLS certificate error.
• I ruled out the local kit by testing my laptop work on my BT, then going to their house and proving mine fails too. (facebook.com is just an example site used)
• Tried turning off paretal controls and found it has dissapeared from the services list completely in thir myBT. Not there to be turned on or off.
• Tried turning BT web protect off and get an error on the page. (first BT support guy I spoke to confirmed he could not do this either)
• Tried changing the DNS on the PC to googles and I could connect ! but BT web protect actually should not allow that if it was working.
• Can't just change all the DNS's due to things like android phones, smart TV's etc. things like whatapp will work on iphone but not android !!!! Proved its the network by connecting to another wifi and it works.

We would like to get the securty tools turned off while we check everything works normally, but then we would like to get them put on again (in the hope they work correctly for protection of the family).

Oh and yes , I know what your are thinking, yes we have hard reset the router 😉

3 days have past and still no call back, there must be a way to get this call looked at? It just doesn't seem to fit the standard scripts and so rattles around and goes nowhere.

Thanks in advance

[dgw1]

Can you not change the DNS server on the BT router? I'm not a fan of ISPs security controls, I'd rather tweak them myself and there are public DNS servers that offer similar if not the same security facilities. Thinking of which if you can't tweak the DNS server settings on the router, and it is only a handful of devices that need that kind of control, just chaange the DNS settings on those instead. Just to let you know most android/apple/smart tv devices can have their DNS server settings changed, doing a simple Google search on those device models will show you how (Google: change DNS server IP address on blah blah device) 😉

[gg30340]

You can not change the DNS on BT hubs.

It sounds like BT Parental controls /BT Web Protect is the source of your friends problems. If they have activated without your friends intervention there will be nothing you can do to turn them off.

I have notified the moderators of the forum about your problem. Once they have read this they may be able to help. They are a BT UK based team and if they can help they will reply via this thread asking you to contact them via a link. They are very busy at present so once you have replied to them by the link, it can take over 48 hours for them to re-contact you.

[JohnC2]

Hi @lilster Sorry you have not been contacted back and that your friend is having difficulty with the parental controls.

Drop us over your friends details and your contact details and we will be happy to help you get this fixed for your friend. You can contact us by clicking on my user name and selecting contact the mods.

Thanks
John

[lilster]

Thanks, I did think about that but my guess is that some future update would "correct" the issue and actually block every device in the house 🙂 I would love to have either working controls or no controls. Good idea though thanks for taking time to reply.

[lilster]

JohnC2 so nice to see a contact the Mods request come in this morning 🙂 I have send all the detals over via the link. Fingers crossed here.

[JohnC2]

Hi @lilster Thanks for that and I can see the form in our queue. We will be in touch with you early next week.

Cheers

John

[DavidM]

Hi @lilster,

Thanks for sending over the details. I ried calling this morning, sorry I missed you. I've checked the account and can see thnat this case is being dealt with by our Executive Level Complaints team who will own until resolution. I have updated the complaint notes confirming your posts on the forum.

Cheers

David

[lilster]

Sorry I couldn't take that call, glad it's with a team who may be able to help get this with a team who can help. I will be sure to post back here when the issue is resolved for the sanity of others. 

[lilster]

Imagine a month has gone by and all that time, despite being with the exec level escalation team, there was nothing to report. The communication was better, thanks Dean, but the information was just words to the effct of "were still working on it" and "it's a complicated one".

Finally yesterday there was news that they had found an issue with protection tools that is affecting multiple BT customers. A fix was applied and so far after some limited testing things are looking to be fixed.

Sorry to say there is no real lesson to learn here, but perhaps it might help someone to know that is you keep going you will get there eventually but if your call is out of the ordinary, and not in one of those scripts they use, then you wil never fix the issue unless your call is excalated.

When we have done some more testing I will post back here with anything I learn but... for  many they may find today they can suddenly get to sites like facebook.com without getting SSL errors !