Parental Controls on your Zuku and Safaricom WiFi Routers

Parental controls on your internet router are a required control if you want to safeguard your children against encountering inappropriate content online.

It is important to be aware of parental controls offered by mobile device manufacturers, social network platforms, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), gaming devices and computer operating systems (Windows, Linux and MAC).

Setting up parental controls through your WiFi router can be the easiest way to manage access across all the connected devices within your home.

Summary

I reviewed both my Safaricom and Zuku router and identified Zuku to have all the required features to block inappropriate content based on URL and keywords and additional features for email alerts and logging to other devices for monitoring or fancy dashboards for security enthusiasts.

Things to Note

Documentation on this may vary based on the type of router. I am currently using the following:

• Zuku: Castlenet Technology
• Safaricom: Huawei HG8145V5

Blocking vs Allowing

• Blocking requires that you have a list of all the sites you want to block which might be a long list.
• Allowing requires you to have a list of all the sites you want to allow your kids to access which will be a short list. You can always add new sites in the future.

Zuku

Advantages

1. Can block sites for all devices using the WiFi or block sites for specific devices.
2. Can get notifications via Email or Syslog

Disadvantages

1. Does not come with default parental controls

Blocking Inappropriate Content

Access the WiFi web portal by going to http://192.168.0.1 and login with the credentials placed at the bottom of the WiFi router.

The Zuku firewall settings allow a user to add sites that you would like to block or allow on the WiFi.

You can configure this by clicking on the Firewall tab then Filtering tab (highlighted in blue) as shown below:

Firewall →Filtering

On the “Filtering” section you will see a “create” button. Click on it to add a new site.

You will see the following page:

You can be able to configure the router to block the URL for all devices using the WiFi connection or restrict it to a specific MAC address belonging to your kids device.

Enter the URL as indicated above ad choose the days when the site will be blocked. For my settings i have indicated everyday.

You can also indicate what times the sites should be allowed or blocked.

After entering the details, choose whether to block or allow the site and make sure that the “Enabled” field has been marked as “On” then click on “Apply”.

Hints

• You do not ave to enter the full URLs. You can enter a word such as “xxx” and all sites with the word will be blocked.
• You can block social media sites during specific hours so that your kids can have time to study or read a book.

Notifications

You can configure email alerts, if someone tries to access the blocked sites by going to the “Local Log” tab and entering your email address, and SMTP mail server configurations on the input sections then enable alerting and click on the “Apply” button.

Common SMTP Servers

• Gmail: smtp.gmail.com
• Hotmail: smtp-mail.outlook.com
• Office365/Outlook: smtp.office365.com

Send alerts via Email

If you are a techie and would like to analyse data on your WiFi and learn about your WiFi usage or monitor their activity you can configure “Remote Log” which sends activity logs into another device where you can store and review the data with fancy dashboards.

You can configure this by going to the Firewall tab then Remote Log section:

Firewall → Remote Log

Forward data to remote server

Select the events you would like to send to the receiving device (Syslog Server) and also enter the IP address of the device.

To Note

• Permitted Connections: Connections allowed on your WiFi router
• Blocked Connections: Connections blocked on your WiFi router
• Known Internet Attacks: If you are hosting a site on your router, people might be targeting your router since it is on the internet, so you can be able to capture the guys targeting your router using known attacks.
• Product Configuration Events: Capture any modifications on the router.

Safaricom

Advantages

1. Can block sites for all devices using the WiFi or block sites for specific devices.
2. Can download logs

Disadvantages

1. Does not come with default parental controls
2. Configuration a bit more complex (my personal view)
3. You have to enter the full URL and cannot use words
4. Cannot receive email notifications or stream logs.

Firewall

Access the WiFi web portal by going to http://192.168.100.1 and login with the credentials placed at the bottom of the WiFi router.

The Safaricom WiFi router has a Parental Control feature which allows you to setup rules in form of templates. This templates can be applied for all devices or specific devices.

Click on the ‘new’ button to create a new template. Then fill in the ‘Template name’ field, choose the time period and enter the URL’s of the prohibited websites.

For timelines you can choose the time period when the site will be blacklisted for example if you want your kids can only access social media within certain periods or choose ‘whole day’ to block access.

You can also choose specific days to block are whitelist access.

You can setup the period by clicking on the ‘New’ button and setting up the time.

Example: Selecting the time and day

Setting up the sites to block follows the same format. You will be required to enter the exact URL to be either blocked or allowed depending on what you choose on the ‘Filter Mode’ section.

Remember to also click the ‘Enable website filter’ to enable the parental control. Click on the ‘Apply’ button to save the changes.

You will also be required to add a device that should follow the parental control rules. Click on the ‘New’ button and select the list of devices connecting to your WiFi connection. Then click on ‘Apply’ to save.

Notifications

The router has the capability of recording connections from your WiFi. All you have to do is click on the ‘Enable Firewall Log’ button.

Then click on the ‘New’ button to create a rule. First click on ‘Enable Log Rule’ button , then select one by one the ‘Log Access Direction’ categories and on the ‘Log Rule Action’ section, select Accept. Click on the ‘Apply’ Button to save the changes. You should have four (4) different entries with the four categories as listed below:

• From Internet to LAN
• From Internet to local
• From local to Internet
• From LAN to local

You can then download the logs after sometime to check what is being accessed.

Disadvantages for WiFi Routers

Your Wifi router comes with a reset button so that you can be able to return your settings back to default. Anyone who knows the location of the Reset button can be able to delete all your configuration settings so make sure you download a copy of your settings so that you can be able to restore the settings.

You can also just make sure your kids cannot be able to get access to the router by placing it in a locked room or find a special box where you can place the router but leave the antennas exposed.

Also make sure you change the WiFi web portal password and only trusted people have the password

Happy Hacking!!

Next, I will be covering how to setup a syslog server so that you can monitor your WiFi traffic.