Circlewith Disney Parental Controls and Filters for Wireless Devices

Really impressed. Totally simple to use and great tool. Our children are pretty well behaved, do listen to rules, and don't abuse their internet - yet Circle gives me confidence I can protect them from accidentally seeing things that they shouldn't need to see at a young age. YouTube Restricted mode, Safe Search, and a heap of non-child friendly web filters incredibly easy to apply across the kids devices. As they get older it allows me to say to them - "I can see exactly what sites you have been on" - which is the kind of transparency I want to make them realise the internet is a public place not a private place. Some routers sort of do this, but not per person and never with such clear reporting from your iPhone. We don't need to use the more intrusive features to manage our children - like timed-allowance, or internet-time rewards, or god mode feature (pause all internet in the house) - but its quite nice to know its there in case any behaviours took a turn for the worse.

I'll tell you my experience and let you make up your own mind...Have been living with a 'smart' home for the last 18 months - lights / heating / alarm system / etc., and I'm like a 5-year old child with it... hours of entertainment knocking the lights off on the kids from my phone...never gets old that...(this is how exciting my life is)... anyway no real bother with anything. I'm pretty security aware so passwords are changed regularly.So, the Circle device arrived on Monday, and ashamed as I am to admit it, there was a slightly over stimulated Homer Simpson moment with an 'oooh-ooh-ooh' / jittery fingers / feet swapping actions etc. / with unboxing and un-packaging it. With the exception of some very small teething issues the device did really well on installation - it was pretty straight forward process. The UX is very VERY excellent and managing the family profiles is a doddle - obviously some effort has been put into this from the UI guys in Circle, I couldn't fault it. The on-boarding process contains a cautionary note indicating a 48 hours timeframe is required for the unit to recognise all devices in the home - so happy days... life is just soooooo good.So... Day 3 started at 5am in the morning when I woke to hear the heating boiler kick start.... (a "WTF??" moment if ever there was one)...who put the heating on in our bedroom at 5am????? The heating has been off all summer and the smart heating device has been in OFF mode since May (with a small passcode lock in case any of the little frosty-boned children I live with made a unilateral decision that everybody in the house was cold)... so crawled out of bed, knocked it off from the wall and went back to my lovely dream.Next morning, all good at home - kids having a bit of an allergic reaction to their new restrictions from Circle... but there ya go kids...when you're paying the bills you can watch what ya want, until then, soak it up. Went to leave the house and noticed the house alarm was off... another "WTF???" moment...definitely set that last night... how is it off? What the sh*t is going on...? Then, like slow-mo video reveal from my iPhone, it finally dawns on me that the only thing new / different the last couple of days was the Circle Device from Disney... what are the chances..? Hmmmmmmmmm.So, right away I got on the ole tin-ternet and searched the term under 'vulnerabilities Circle by Disney'... the Nov 2017 thread from ZDNet that caught my eye... "Circle with Disney web filter riddled with vulnerabilities / The kid-friendly Internet filter protects children but did not shield family privacy" and I read it thoroughly... what a 'come-to-Jesus' moment that was. As I read, it was like an out-of-body experience with a HD camera rapidly approaching my face as I was calculating just how much work it was going to be to put this right....and then set about the following tasks:> Factory reset on my service providers modem... a 90mins support awaiting new addressing.> Factory re-install on all android devices / phones / tablets / etc.> Factory re-install on smart heating device> 2 Hours on hold to house alarm security firm resetting the home security unitAnd as if all of that wasn't enough, just to top things off, I noticed 2 hours after unplugging it, that the wee little led light was still on and pulsing away and would not switch off (as if the little b#±t@rd white box was winking at me saying 'not dead yet'). So did a factory re-install yet again on the Circle unit but to be honest all trust had collapsed at this point and the pulsing light remained...so it was either a bucket of water, or jump in the car and run it over to my Mothers house (who has no internet) and leave it there until the battery died...(I opted for the later, which then led to a 30min unscheduled visit and a cup of tea with a nice rich-tea biscuit... nice visit.. but really hadn't got the time).All in, twas a total balls of a weekend - spent all Saturday / Sunday re-instating everything that little white box had any sort of dealings with, while getting mangled by 3 angry children and an understandably agitated wife (who's confidence in me is in a constant state of review)... oh yeah, and to top it off, I got to miss the Pope drive by the top of our road (not joking) – he was in Dublin the weekend first time in 40 years and drove by the top of our road and I missed it cause I was b@lls-deep in fixing the mess this box had made.Suffice to say, if you're bored and up for a challenge knock yourselves out... it's totally 'J-Awsome'... like 'Awesome'... but with really really REALLY sharp teeth.

Very easy to setup & manage.Steps were straight forward as follows :-1. Connect to the Circle WiFi network that appears when you turn on the Circle.2. Connect to the Circle's management console & set it to join it your existing WiFi (assuming you have a compatible router - check the list). The Circle WiFi network will then disappear3. Connect to your original WiFi & open the Circle application on your phone4. Create a profile for each family member, selecting their age category (eg. teen), total allowed usage time, bedtime, etc.5. Within the app, assign the detected devices (they are assigned to the Home profile initially, which has no restrictions applied) to the relevant family member's profile. You can change the detected name to a friendlier one if you wish (eg. rename android_2345612_785 to Toms Phone). Multiple devices can be assigned to a single profile (eg. Toms Phone, Toms iPad, Toms Laptop)6. Sit back & wait for the kids to complain.You receive alerts on your phone / pad, wherever you have the Circle app installed, as & when the Circle box disappears of the network / kids exceed time limits / new devices join your WiFi / etc.

I am on my second week using this device constantly and although it is quite good at what it advertises itself to be able to do, I have two major reservations and hence knocking two stars off my rating. The first and more important one is that it is quite flaky in terms of its operation. It frequently disconnects for no obvious reason which results in the whole internet to go down before needing to reboot it by performing a hardware power cycle. It also very frequently drops out of being able to picked up by the mobile app requiring re-registration of the device (although it shows up on my network, the circle app just cannot see it). There are other issues related to this like my inability to block DNS ports on my router for security as this seems to affect the device's performance even more adversely. The second significant issue is that when a malfunction occurs and I am away from home, I would not be able to access the device or my router remotely to be able to reboot it as the internet access to my home network will be completely broken. I am happy to persevere with these niggles just now as it is helping control the kids access and internet time but I really hope that these will be fixed with time. My last worry is that the company would eventually move into a subscription-based business model (yes, I have been bitten by the likes of Canary.is and Y-Cam...etc.) as they are already charging for their mobile service (Circle GO) making the whole idea much more over-priced than it is now.