A blocklist of individual addresses is obsolete the day you write it. Category filtering asks a different question — what kind of site is this — and answers it for pages nobody has catalogued yet. Two presets cover most families; everything is adjustable.
What each preset blocks
Pick a preset per child, then change any row. The presets are a starting position, not a policy.
| Category | Child (under ~12) | Teen (13+) | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult & pornography | Blocked | Blocked | The category everyone installs a filter for. |
| Gambling & betting | Blocked | Blocked | Includes loot-box and skin-betting sites, which slip past most filters. |
| Self-harm & pro-eating-disorder | Blocked | Blocked | Blocked at every age, and not something we make optional. |
| Violence & gore | Blocked | Blocked | |
| Drugs & alcohol | Blocked | Warn | A teen doing a school project on drug policy should not hit a wall. |
| Dating | Blocked | Blocked | Worth revisiting at 16 rather than leaving on by default. |
| Weapons | Blocked | Warn | Catches airsoft and history sites too — expect to allow a few. |
| Social networks | Blocked | Allowed | Blocking these on a teenager's phone moves the traffic to an app, not away. |
| Video & streaming | Time-limited | Allowed | Better handled by the screen time app than by blocking. |
| Gaming | Time-limited | Allowed | |
| Unknown / uncategorised | Blocked | Allowed | Strict for a younger child; on a teen it produces too many false stops. |
Every blocked attempt is logged with the site, the category and the time. That is not a detail — a filter you cannot audit is a filter asking you to take its word for it, and the log is how you find out it is blocking a homework site before your child concludes the whole system is stupid.
Safe Search, which matters more than the blocklist
Blocking a site does not help if the search results page serves explicit thumbnails on an innocent query. TheTruthSpy enforces Safe Search on Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo at the network level, so it cannot be switched off in the browser's own settings — which is the first thing a curious child tries.
For a younger child this single setting does more than the entire category list, because it governs the route almost everything arrives through.
Closing the second-browser gap
Here is the trick every filtered child works out sooner or later: if the filter lives in one browser, install a different one. Download something obscure from the store and the web is wide open again.
TheTruthSpy filters below the browser rather than inside it, and blocks browsers that are not on your approved list. Chrome and Samsung Internet are allowed by default; anything else has to be approved. This is the boring, unglamorous part that determines whether a filter still works in month three — and it is the part cheaper tools skip.
What a website blocker cannot do
Four honest limits, because a filter sold as complete is a filter that gets trusted too far.
| Gap | What happens | What actually helps |
|---|---|---|
| Inside apps | Content in a social feed never touches the browser and is not filtered. | Platform settings and social media monitoring. |
| A VPN | Routes traffic around the filter entirely. | TheTruthSpy tells you a VPN appeared rather than pretending the log is complete. |
| Another device | A school laptop or a friend's phone is untouched. | A household rule, not a device setting. |
| Anything sent to them directly | An image in a group chat arrives whatever the filter says. | A conversation about what to do when it happens. |
A filter is a fence around the easy accidents, and most of what a younger child runs into is an accident. It is not a substitute for the conversation about what to do when something gets through.
When the filter gets it wrong
It will, and how you handle the first few times decides whether your child treats it as reasonable or as an obstacle to route around.
A homework site is blocked
Usually a health, history or news topic caught by Drugs, Weapons or Violence.
Allow that site specifically from the web log — two taps, and the category stays on for everything else. Doing this quickly, without a negotiation, is what buys the filter its legitimacy.
A whole category feels too strict
The Child preset applied to a thirteen-year-old is the usual cause.
Move that child to the Teen preset rather than unpicking rows one at a time. Presets exist so you are not maintaining eleven decisions by hand.
Blocked attempts keep appearing for one category
Something specific is being looked for, repeatedly.
Do not lead with the log. One blocked page means nothing; a pattern late at night means something. Raise the subject, not the evidence — “is there anything you've been trying to look up?” gets further than a printout.
Nothing is being logged at all
The accessibility service that powers filtering was switched off, usually by a system update.
Check Settings → Devices in your panel. The phone's health card names the service and sends a one-tap fix. An empty log and a broken filter look identical from the outside.
A VPN has appeared on the phone
Sometimes a school requirement. Sometimes not.
You are told, rather than silently bypassed. Ask what it is for — there are legitimate answers, and the question is more useful than blocking it outright.
Where the filter sits
Blocking sites is one layer. Apps are handled separately by the app blocker, and the browsing history shows which pages were actually opened, including the ones the filter let through.
Free, on Android — see the free parental control pricing — and the download and setup guide takes about ten minutes.