OT ish, BT Protect in router stopping podcast addresses.

Mar 26, 2021 Last reply: 5 years ago 12 Replies
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This is for a friend. She has been listening to some podcasts from AMI audio in Canada for years, but a couple of weeks ago, no device could connect to these addresses giving there is a data error or other mystifying message. After checking with some others on BT and finding they have the same issue, her husband rang BT who were mystified. Typical one might say, but he spotted the BT protect or whatever its called when looking at the router to see if something had been altered. He turned it off and it all came back, but there were dire warnings about doing this. Neither are particularly technical and BT are useless, so he asked me if there was a way to let stuff through but keep protecting whatever it is that it protects. It sounds to me a bit like a Nanny knows best approach to security and as they have no children, both are retired, it hardly seems appropriate to default on some kind of adult content filter, as some of the podcasts of course cover adult themes. Any ideas?


I know the address has moved recently, but its still get attable on the phone and Echo dot here on Virgin. I guess I'll need to presubscribed to get the true address and see if I can find out what the change meant. Brian


According to the BT page, it's an all or nothing system, can't be overridden per device.

A very good reason for disabling any ISP provided crap and only using what you provide.

I dread to think what's squirrelled away inside my Virgin Superhub if I was using it as a hub.

Also using my own DNS seems sensible.

I have never ever used an ISP supplied or managed router in my life.

Back in the day with ADSL I was saddled with a BT 2Wire. But that was for work, so horses for courses.

For my own internet, it's a Superhub in modem mode and then my own TP Link and piHole lash up.

Possibly that thing deserves an award for the most locked down device ever created?

Came with a good power supply for my other projects :-)

Dunno, the TiVo from Virgin is a contender.

It's bin day, so a 2wire, a couple of cisco 8xx and an old netgear have all been chucked, my only spare router now is a billion 8800NL which can at least do VDSL.

Too much complexity. I just forked out on a Draytek.. even better than my beloved Cisco SOHO router which ran hotter than a Hollywood starlet.

Ah the joy. Mine does ADSL VDSL or straight Ethernet.

My "live" router can use VDSL, ADSL, Ethernet or 4G for its WAN port (BT home hub5a, but without BT's firmware)

I don't think my friends would be up to replacing the bt router, so they have to make the decision forgo lots of content for the blind from Canadian ami.ca or switch it off. Most of the BT folk they spoke to had never heard of the system, but one mentioned it was introduced to protect children, like what? I mean how does that work. Brian

The big error though is that there is no way for people like blind users who use a lot of audio streamed media, need to have these sites working on their echos and specialisttech and phones. ami iis accessible media, a bit ironic, don't you feel? Brian

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