HomeProtect
Web Filtering for Home
Accredited by the UK Safer Internet Centre - for school devices used at home
What is HomeProtect?
Keeping children safe is in LGfL’s DNA. We have long been known for safeguarding expertise in education, training, research & policy, but also technology.
For many years we have provided schoolsafe internet filtering, but now we also have supersafe filtering for the home.
LGfL HomeProtect is for managed Windows devices, Chromebooks or iPads and is nothing like the simple ‘family settings’ available from consumer ISPs.
IMPORTANT - are you logging? Take action to turn on to allow reports
We recently upgraded the HomeProtect system for filtering school devices in the home which we developed for you during the pandemic. One of the key developments relates to logging and reporting abilities to help you meet the KCSIE requirements and DfE filtering standards. Please make sure you have activated logging so you can run regular or ad hoc reports. Simply follow these instructions (or pass to your technician) to ensure you can run a report when you need to.
Key features
Same tech protects 1 million+ children at LGfL schools
Easy to deploy: individual devices or across the school
Use on managed iPads, Chromebooks & Windows devices
Are my devices compatible and how do I install it?
Define 'safe', what does it block, can I customise it?
HomeProtect FAQs
We hope you will find the information you need on and within this webpage. Please explore the other questions below. Please take a look at this summary document too. If you have any further queries please email: homeprotect@lgfl.net
HomeProtect is much safer than the family settings on a home internet connection, which are typically limited to pornography, illegal sites, or perhaps an alcohol block stops you seeing the menu for your pub lunch. These systems cannot effectively protect children and young people from harm. HomeProtect, however, is based on enterprise-grade, school-safe Netsweeper technology which we have used to carefully curate allow and block lists from over 100 categories to meet the needs of a home learner, allowing the necessary technologies but blocking obvious harms.
HomeProtect is available for Windows devices, Chromebooks and iPad (please note iPad system restriction in question below)
The system filters the internet regardless of your connection, because it is integral to the device. So whether wifi, mobile, home, shopping centre or school, your students will be filtered. That’s what makes it safe – using a different wifi or a mobile hotspot won’t bypass any protections; nor will VPN or DNS-changing apps.
HomeProtect isn’t designed to be used in school (it is not the same as SchoolProtect/WebScreen), but will work there if you want it to. It is a deliberately simple and easy-to-use system, whereas most schools will expect more controls and the usual school policies to apply - so we can disable it automatically when a device joins the school network if you tell us your public IP address range when placing your order.
The new DfE webfiltering standards which are referenced in KCSIE 2023 ask schools not just to annually review filtering bu to carry out regular checks. https://testhomeprotect.lgfl.net is a site designed to help you check that HomeProtect is active on a device and to check key categories are blocked or allowed. Use this template to help perform your checks of web filtering. Find out more about the filtering standards in general via https://kcsie.lgfl.net.
You can initially apply one of two policies:
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Safe with Gaming & Social Media ALLOWED
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Safe with Gaming & Social Media BLOCKED
Schools have a range of opinions on social media and gaming (especially when pupils are at home on school devices), hence the choice. Beyond that, however, you are unlikely to need to change our single safe filtering policy, designed to meet the needs of learners at home. This is a careful curation of categories from the 100+ available in the Netsweeper system to keep children and young people safe when surfing at home. The list is different to sites typically available in a school - for example we have ensured that all key video-meeting platforms are allowed, along with any sites which might be used for homework or research, but that tasteless and potentially harmful sites are blocked.
There are over 100 categories but the kinds of things we have blocked include themes otherwise accessible on a standard home connection: adult content which is not pornography (nudity, erotica, sexual drawings), plus swimwear, adware, malware and sites used to hide other sites, alcohol, drugs and smoking sites and promotion, bullying, body modification, self-harm and promotion of poor body image, criminal skills, hacking, drugs and weapons, terrorism and other extreme sites, rude, tasteless and hateful speech, gambling, dating and more.
We don't think you are likely to need change what is blocked, however, if you use G Suite or Office 365, a member of staff can be granted access to a management portal for more granular access to choose categories and allow or block sites for all students in the school. Students signing into Chromebooks and Windows devices will automatically pick up this customised policy. Students using iPads will be prompted to sign into the browser with their Office 365/G Suite credentials upon first launch.
YouTube is allowed but we strongly recommend that you force restricted mode (so it cannot be turned off) to prevent inappropriate videos being shown. This is managed in a different way by each platform and we describe this in the instructions for each system installation.
iPad internet traffic cannot be monitored at a device level in the same way as other Chromebooks and Windows devices, so schools using HomeProtect on iPad must use the dedicated HomeProtect browser and disable all other browsers (such as Safari, Chrome, Firefox and others) - otherwise students would simply use a different browser to bypass the filter. Once installed, however, HomeProtect filters in the same way as the other systems. Please note that you can only roll out the HomeProtect App via Apple School Manager so if you do not have managed iPads via ASM you should not purchase Apple licences.
HomeProtect on Chrome has the added bonus of applying to an entire Chrome profile. That means if you apply the licence to a student in the G Suite console, they will be filtered on school Chromebooks AND any other Chromebook they sign into with that login AND on the Chrome browser on any device once they log in. So you could apply licences to all students and then suggest to parents to ask their children to always use that profile when online at home (by logging on with it to the family chromebook or by logging into the chrome browser on any other device).
When you purchase licences, we will send you full instructions for the operating system you have chosen. Installation is quick and easy and not dissimilar to standard new Windows software / Apple apps / Chrome extensions. For Chrome, the G Suite console is used, for iPad you must use Apple School Manager and your MDM, and for Windows it can be installed in one of the many ways that schools install software onto devices – as long as the user does not have local admin privileges (so cannot uninstall it).
Have a look at this overview about the technical details of HomeProtect.
The first time a user accesses the internet when filtered by HomeProtect they will be presented with an information screen to inform them of this. Thereafter, they will only see a difference if they try to access a blocked site, when an LGfL HomeProtect block page will be shown. Otherwise, they will not notice any difference and will not need to do anything differently.
We have put together these documents to summarise the information you can provide to parents about HomeProtect.
We recently upgraded the HomeProtect system for filtering school devices in the home which we developed for you during the pandemic. One of the key developments relates to logging and reporting abilities to help you meet the KCSIE requirements and DfE filtering standards.
Please make sure you have activated logging so you can run regular or ad hoc reports. Simply follow these instructions (or pass to your technician) to ensure you can run a report when you need to.
If you have questions that aren't answered on this page (they probably are though so please read all the documents!), please email homeprotect@lgfl.net
Case Studies: How has HomeProtect been used?
HomeProtect case study - Wandsworth schools
HomeProtect case study - St George's Primary, Wandsworth
"With safeguarding at the top of every school's agenda, it was really important to our Trust to extend the filtering protections to learners at home. As always, LGfL recognised our requirements and delivered a cost-effective solution. As a G Suite for Education MAT, setup and configuration couldn't have been easier, giving us piece of mind in an effective, well supported system."
Louise Pragnell, Head of IT, Learning in Harmony Trust
