W23,
Thanks for the kind way of putting things. In my background being precise has always been important to avoid ambiguity or creating wrong (unachievable) expectations. May be there is a need to try to be more generic on the forums? Where my mind was at on this matter is it is not simply a matter of having restrictive settings, but having them implemented in a way which cannot be changed. Things can be locked down, but still be capable of being readily unlocked, hence the thought of being inhibited of being reconfigured.
For me there is a difference between simply being locked down to prevent accidental undesirable activity and configured so as to prevent circumvention of such lock downs. If parents want real reassurance, they need to do much more than is being offered here: the protection needs to be on the device used by the child, not in their home network, be that their router or their ISPs network. For as soon as the device is moved out of that environment - a friend's home, public wifi or plain 3G - the exposure to the perceived risk returns unabated.
It is for those reasons I have constantly suggested that ISP safe guards are no safe guard to the perceived problems. For parents to believe otherwise is not a sound expectation. Unfortunately in dumbing everything down - simple hassle free internet connectivity - devices do not have the facilities to deliver the desired controls. The right answer is properly configured device based firewalls. Unfortunately configuring those properly requires skill - a level of skill I'll confess to not having at an adequate level.
The only other way that such protection could be universally implemented 'out there' would be for all Internet access (from wherever, provided by whoever) to be completely locked down so that the restrictions are applied by blocking at IP address level. That would negate DNS circumvention or proxy tactics to get around the restrictions. In short someone out there would need to decide what we all can and cannot access.
Reading between the lines of Chris' post, safeguard is being delivered using BT's "safe" DNS servers. If the address you ask for is deemed to be "bad" the IP address is not returned. If you know the IP address you can still reach the content. If you change the DNS server the protection is lost. The method of implementation sets the restriction at a household level - even parents will be restricted to what they set as suitable for the youngest member of the household, but only when accessing from within the household.
For what it's worth, I'd be very happy to learn that my concerns are wrong and that the implementation is actually far better than I fear.
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