We know it's important to prevent under 18s from accessing inappropriate content. BT Mobile offers free parental control services which you can tailor yourself to limit the content your kids can access through mobile websites. These will be turned on to our 'light' setting when you activate your SIM.
To customise your filter level to suit your family's needs, you can go to your My Mobile page and select the right level of parental controls.
You can also configure your BT Wi-fi parental controls.
Log in to www.bt.com/mymobile > to set up Parental Controls.
What are parental controls ?
You can control what content you access via BT's Parental Controls. All our BT Broadband and BT Mobile customers get them for free.
There are two types of controls:
- BT Broadband and BT Wi-fi use BT Parental controls.
- BT Mobile uses BT mobile parental controls
What levels of protection are available?
BT Mobile gives you three levels of content restriction:
- Strict: blocks content only suitable for the over-12s
- Light: blocks content only suitable for adults
- Off: allows everything
We can't guarantee that BT Mobile parental controls will work when you use your phone abroad.
What type of content is restricted on the "Light" setting for BT Mobile parental controls?
The Light setting blocks access to the following types of content:
- Alcohol: Sites promoting, glamourising or encouraging excessive drinking in a way that's aimed at children or might be appealing to them
- Criminal skills: Sites providing information, resources, equipment or methods used in crimes or used to avoid getting prosecuted for such crimes
- Drugs: Sites which promote, offer, sell, supply, encourage or advocate people to grow, make, distribute of use illegal drugs, pharmaceuticals, intoxicating plants or chemicals and their related paraphernalia
- Gore: Sites with excessive and graphic violence and/or sites featuring pain or injury being inflicted on people or animals. That might be things like dismemberment, torture and sadism, and overly explicit horror movies
- Hacking: Sites promoting or providing the means to practice illegal hacking or other unlawful activities using computer-programming skills
- Hate: Sites encouraging hostility or aggression towards, or the denigration of, individuals or groups on the basis of their race, religion, gender, nationality, ethnic origin, and so on. This includes site justifying inequality, aggression and hostility through purported scientific or commonly accredited methods
- Pornography: Sites with explicit material designed to cause sexual excitement
- Self harm: Sites which advocate, normalise, or glamourise ways to harm yourself
- Sex advice: Sites providing sex information, techniques, exercises and products. Also sites with explicit or detailed discussions of sex and adult sexuality
- Suicide: Sites advocating or glorifying suicide or that help people to commit suicide
- Tobacco: Sites promoting, glamorising or encouraging smoking in a way that's aimed at children or might be appealing to them
- Violence: Sites which promote or educate visitors on how to cause property damage, physical harm or death with homemade weapons, explosive devices, or other criminal violence
- Texts to 18+ services
From the 27 June 2017, we are also blocking HTTPS Pornography sites to "Light" users. This doesn't mean that we're making our parental controls any stricter. We're only blocking the sites that we should already block for your setting. This is according to the British Board of Film Classification guidelines.
We already block HTTP websites and are now doing the same with HTTPS. The 'S' stands for secure. It means all communications are encrypted between your browser and the website and hidden from us.
What type of content is restricted on the "Strict" setting for BT Mobile parental controls?
All the content on the Light setting, plus unmoderated social networking sites, online dating and chat rooms.
How do I change the BT Mobile parental control setting?
Just pick the setting you want at www.bt.com/mymobile >
Who decides what content should be restricted?
The mobile industry asked the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) to decide what content should be rated "18". So it's in line with the BBFC's classification guidelines for TV and film.
Find out more about the guidelines >
If you believe a website or content has been misclassified please get in touch with us.
What about illegal content?
Things some people find okay might be thought inappropriate by others. That's why we've a framework based on BBFC standards. But some content is just plain illegal. So for example we work with the Internet Watch Foundation to ensure we block all child abuse images.
If you stumble across an image or video online which you suspect shows child sexual abuse you can report it securely and confidentially to the Internet Watch Foundation at www.iwf.org.uk >
How do I manage parental controls for BT Wi-fi?
If you're not already using BT Parental Controls you'll need to activate them if you want to block certain types of content on your BT Mobile phone when you're on BT Wi-fi. You can find out if BT Parental Controls are switched on by checking the settings at www.bt.com/mymobile >