Would enabling parental controls block my VPN from working?

I was thinking of enabling BT's parental controls to protect our children.

The reason I have not done so previously is that both my wife and myself login to work using VPNs on our work laptops, and on my home PC I use a paid VPN service to mask my IP address when downloading torrents.

Would the BT parental controls stop these VPNs working? Why is that - because it forces you to use BT DNS servers? Or because it blocks all VPN traffic to avoid users getting round the parental controls?

Many thanks.

If you are already on BT and the VPN is working, then just enabling the parental controls will not change your DNS, it will simply change which sites are available via the existing DNS servers that you are using.

In short you are going via the parental controls already as a BT user, just that no sites are blocked due to hitting the content rules.

I think I am right in saying normally it wouldn't have any effect. It would depend on if you are using the VPN services client on each PC/Device, which most users do, which it wouldn't or setting it up as a VPN client up on on the router, in which case normally you have to change the DNS to Open DNS servers such as Google, it which case it probably would do.

OK, now I am confused. Normally obviously MrSaffron is completely correct, but in this case I am not sure sure. Currently I have not activated BT parental controls at all, and can use any DNS service I want, however, apparently once parental controls are activated, you are forced to use BT DNS servers, all other DNS settings will result in an error message.
Port 53 (DNS) requests are intercepted at network level.
Now I am not sure if my VPN will somehow get round this, by encrypting DNS to them, but I doubt it.
Have I got this wrong?
Thanks.

Thanks

In reply to a post by rogerfp:

change the DNS to Open DNS servers such as Google.

This sounds like you're introducing a DNS leak into a VPN connection, which is bad practice.

In reply to a post by OnFire:

however, apparently once parental controls are activated, you are forced to use BT DNS servers, all other DNS settings will result in an error message.
Port 53 (DNS) requests are intercepted at network level.
Now I am not sure if my VPN will somehow get round this, by encrypting DNS to them, but I doubt it.
Have I got this wrong?

No, that is my understanding too.

The kids will more than likely find a way around it within one evening. They probably already can circumvent their schools filtering or at least know a friend who can. They will circumvent the filtering you apply in the same way. A quick google for proxy and away they go.

Or they may already have netflix, and know how to access the USA version of netflix (this is popular with the kids nowadays). They can use the same thing to circumvent the filtering.

The way I see it, filtering is the government & ISPs way of saying we are doing something. Overall though it remains pretty ineffective.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 20-Mar-15 12:28:00)

In that case, it's reasonable to expect that Parental Controls will block the VPN from working.

Edited by deleted (Fri 20-Mar-15 12:44:00)

How easy is it for the account holder to turn them on and off? If easy, then he could just try and see.