One of our missions at Tech Lockdown is to empower people to prevent compulsive bypass of Content Blocking. One of the ways we do this is by allowing you to lock your own Tech Lockdown profile.
Why?
In most cases, people don't want to unblock Security Threats.
However, when scheduling Social Media usage or blocking Adult Content, some people might be tempted to login to their Tech Lockdown account and adjust their Content Policy.
Locking your profile allows you to add some friction to making filter settings less restrictive.
Restrictions when a Profile is Locked
When a profile is locked, the following will be prevented:
- Creating new Allow rules
- Adding to existing Allow rules
- Deleting existing Block, SafeSearch, or YtRestricted rules
- Disabling existing block rules
- Re-ordering rules
- Changing rule schedules
- Inviting new members to share the account
- Turning off certain app preferences
When a profile is locked, the following will still be allowed:
- Creating new Block, SafeSearch, and YtRestricted rules
- Adding to existing Block rules
- Disabling Allow rules
- Removing from existing Allow rules
- Deleting Allow rules
- Turning on certain app preferences
- Unlock Preferences
Select what information needs to be provided when unlocking your profile.
You can select from any of the locking methods that we provide to enable a profile lock. You can pick one method or combine them depending on how restrictive you want to be.
Locking Techniques
We provide several ways to lock your profile. You can combine multiple methods together for a stricter setup.
Password / Pin
Specify a password or pin that must be entered to unlock the profile.
Similar to Apple Screen Time, you can ask another person to set a pin for you or use a password that you can't remember and store it with another method (like putting it in a safe).
Random Text
Require entering randomly generated text in order to unlock.
Random text doesn't rely on you remembering a password. Instead, it makes it harder to unlock your profile by requiring you to spend time and effort manually typing. This can be enabled in addition to a password.
Secondary Email Unlock Pin
Use a Secondary Email address to send a pin required to unlock.
Learn more: Adding a Secondary Email Address to Lock your Profile
Managing Profile Locking
Click your profile icon to find the menu item that will take you to the profile locking section where you can unlock or lock your profile.
Unlocking your Profile
In order to unlock your profile, you'll need to satisfy all of the requirements for each locking method that you originally specified.
If you combined multiple methods, unlocking your profile will require multiple steps.
Secondary Email Notifications
If you add a secondary email address to your Tech Lockdown profile, you can enable Email Notifications so that a trusted person is automatically notified when you lock or unlock your profile.
Learn more: Adding a Secondary Email Address to Lock your Profile
Profile Locking and Account Sharing
It's important to note that profile locking is personal to your own login to your Tech Lockdown account. If you've shared your account with another admin, that person won't be constrained by your profile restrictions.
This means that you could set up limitations for yourself without impacting other admin, who may have different requirements (or might not want any restrictions at all).
Lock, Don't Block!
Some people might block techlockdown.com to prevent themselves from logging into their own dashboard. Don't do this! Use profile locking instead. Here is why.
Preventing yourself from logging into your Tech Lockdown account is risky:
- What happens if you find more content that you want to block?
- What if you need to adjust rule scheduling to optimize a healthy habit you are developing?
- What if you need to troubleshoot your connection by viewing your DNS logs?
Preventing yourself from logging into the account that controls your Content Filtering settings is risky and we don't recommend it. We solve for this with Profile Locking.
That's why we designed our Profile Locking with the following in mind:
- Allow people to easily add to their restrictions
- Prevent people from making their account less restrictive (unless they unlock their profile)