Sky Broadbands Parental Control Features

Starting 2016, new customers of Sky Broadband will get its newest feature as a standard with their service: The Sky Broadband Shield.

This is a parental control feature that allows the user to not only protect against phishing and malware threats, but also contains a customizable watershed feature, with age rating options (PG, 13, 18, Custom or none) which will restrict access to sites at certain times of the day, based on the families’ convenience, making Sky Broadband the first broadband company to provide website filtering services to the customer.

Previously, this feature had been made available as an optional feature. Now, with the feature being made mandatory, Sky has rolled out on emailer to all customers who had joined before November 2013 if they would like to implement this service. Opting out of the service is possible by simply denying the request of this emailer. However, if the emailer is not responded to within a specified period of time then the feature goes live on your Sky broadband service automatically, and a warning message is made visible to you each time you log in. However, you may still opt out of this service. So far, it has been seen that 62% of customers preferred to stick with this services once it was automatically loaded. This automatic Sky Shield service will imply that certain websites are blocked by the 13 age rating until 9 pm and the 18 age rating from 9 pm until morning. This can be amended and customized according to the customers’ preferences. (To find out more about Sky Broadband and Sky Shield, contact the Sky telephone number at 08448003115.)

This move is being welcomed by concerned authorities. The Chief Executive of the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Peter Wanless, calls this a ‘no-brainer’, saying that this feature gives importance to children’s safety without restricting the freedom of the adults.

The Director of Communications Products for Sky Broadband, Lyssa McGowan claims that their customers have already seen this new feature to be of great value to them and how well the flexibility of providing a service but making it optional and customizable has worked in their favor, thus making sure their customers are always protected.