Anyone else been trying parental control apps and getting frustrated?
I've been through Qustodio, Bark, and Norton Family over the past year and a half trying to find something that actually works for my kids (10 and 13). Each one had issues — Qustodio kept logging my daughter out, Bark was sending me alerts about every meme my son saw, and Norton just felt like it was from 2015.
Last month a friend at work mentioned an app called Defenras. Canadian company apparently. I was skeptical because I'd never heard of it but the price was reasonable so I tried it.
Honestly it's been working better than the others. The thing I actually like is it blocks stuff at the DNS level, so it works in every browser — not just Chrome or whatever. My older one used to switch to Firefox to get around our old app and that doesn't work anymore.
Also they claim they don't collect any browsing data which I was suspicious about, but I checked the privacy policy and it actually does look like they don't. No data being sent to servers. That made me feel better about putting it on my kids' phones.
Not perfect — I wish it had geofencing, and the parent dashboard is pretty basic. But for what we needed (blocking adult content, gambling sites, and some specific apps), it works.
Anyone else used it? Curious what other parents think. Or if there's something better I haven't tried.