Does Accountable2You Filter or Block Content?
Does Accountable2You Filter or Block Content?
While we don't provide filtering or blocking, it's not because we're "anti-filtering" or something along those lines. On the contrary, we know filtering can be helpful in some scenarios. We've gone to great lengths to allow our monitoring app to work seamlessly alongside the world's top internet filtering solutions!
So why doesn't Accountable2You offer internet filtering?
1. We focus our strengths on what we're uniquely equipped to do.
We've decided to not include filtering in our service, not because we don't know how, but because it's not our unique passion. Quality suffers at the expense of quantity, so instead of trying to do a bit of everything, we've focused our efforts on creating the world's leading internet accountability platform with comprehensive reporting.
We're thankful for companies that passionately serve others by building filtering services, but that's not us. Our passion and purpose center around helping people stay accountable as they develop real-life strength to face the real-life challenges of this world. We're here to empower accountability in an otherwise invisible area of our lives: the internet.
2. We don't want to offer a false sense of security and safety.
Filtering can be helpful in some situations, yet we’ve found that filters also create a false sense of security. As an example, a parent implements a filter for their child, and after seeing it block a few items, the parent’s engagement relaxes. In some cases, the parent begins to trust the filter as the sole means of protection for their children; a “set it and forget it” approach. We’ve seen many relationships damaged with a similar, subconscious thought process: “I’ve installed this app on so-and-so’s phone, so now they’re fully protected from this point forward.”
Filters are largely ineffective against the will. Yes, they typically protect against an accidental click, but as a means to prevent someone from intentionally accessing pornographic or otherwise objectionable content, filters are largely unhelpful.
For example, the enterprise-grade filtering solutions utilized in most corporations can, despite being managed by full-time security teams with budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, only block about 85% to 95% of the pornographic content for their employees.
A 95% reduction sounds promising initially. However, when you consider the hundreds of billions of pornographic images, videos, and other harmful content online, the remaining 5% is both overwhelmingly massive and easily accessible. Perhaps more worrying is the fact that consumer-available filtering is significantly less effective than the aforementioned enterprise-grade products.
I think a filter or app blocker would be helpful in my scenario. What do you recommend?
We don't recommend depending on filtering exclusively, yet filters can be helpful alongside accountability services. We'd recommend using a filtering service that specializes in that one specific task; "jack of all trades" filters (e.g., "filter & anti-virus") tend not to be as effective.
We've designed our monitoring app to work smoothly alongside the top consumer and enterprise-grade filtering solutions on the market, so feel free to try any one of them you'd like!
While many options exist, CleanBrowsing offers a free filtering solution that works on most devices (Apple iOS users, see below). Please visit their website for complete details and instructions. If you'd like to try an app blocker for Android (restricts the ability to launch certain apps), we can recommend a few options other customers have tried with good results. Send us an email at support@accountable2you.com for the most recent app blocker recommendations for Android.
For Apple iOS Devices:
Apple has created exceptional documentation to guide Apple iOS customers through a wide range of functions and features. While Apple aimed Screen Time to be used by parents for their children, we’ve found it to be incredibly helpful for anyone at any age desiring additional accountability or filtering functionality. They continue to add additional features to the Mac version of Screen Time, too!
Please do check out the links below for more information about using Screen Time on your device. Screen Time offers many great features, but we’ve included a few of our team’s favorites in the bullets below.