Cannot manage BT Parental Controls

[JW5]

When I try to access certain websites (e.g. YouTube or site related to alcohol) my access is blocked with the message “site has been blocked by BT Parental Controls because the account holder has Light filters on”.  I am the account holder. When I login to MyBT and go to the Parental Controls settings, I see Parental Controls are set to OFF.

I’ve spent time investigating (allowing appropriate time for changes to propagate) and find that:

- with Parental Controls OFF I cannot access YouTube or alcohol related websites

- if I turn Parental Controls ON and set them to CUSTOM with access to Alcohol & tobacco permitted, then I cannot access a website related to alcohol 

- if I add the URL for my favourite local brewery to the ‘Allowed Websites’ list, my access to it remains blocked

- if I set Parental Controls to strict, I can access Gambling websites (which should be blocked)

When I get the ‘Blocked’ page, there is the option to Allow Access. I select this option, login with my account holder credentials, and select ‘Always allow this particular site’. I get an error message “You are not authorised to manage this Parental Controls service, please contact the account holder”. I am the account holder!

It seems that my account has parental controls permanently set to ON with LIGHT restrictions, and that I cannot change this through the MyBT interface.

Any help resolving this would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[JohnC2]

Hi @JW5, welcome to the forum, and sorry the Parental Controls aren't working as they should for you.

Would you check and confirm that you're using BT's DNS settings?

Cheers

John

[JW5]

Hi @JohnC2 

I have checked and can confirm that my device is using the BT DNS 192.168.1.254

The Smart Hub 2 (which connects to BT Full Fibre FTTP) has the primary DNS 81.139.57.100 showing in the Smart Hub 2 Manager

Regards

John W

[JohnC2]

Hi @JW5, thanks for checking that for me and posting back. 

I've sent you a Private Message so you can get in touch with the Mod team so we can look into this further for you.

Cheers

John

[JW5 · Accepted solution]

This issue was resolved by resetting my Smart Hub 2 to its factory settings. A factory reset is a ‘last resort’ option as you lose all updates that you’ve made to the hub including wireless network name and password updates. In this case it was worth doing as it fixed the problem. Thanks to David in the BT Cardiff team who help me resolve this.

Details on factory reset can be found here