FAQ
Keeping Your Kids' Devices From Hopping Networks
A child with a second Wi-Fi path — a hotspot, a neighbor, an old router — has left your filtering behind. Here's how to close those side doors.
The side doors
Your gateway filters everything on the Guardian network. The weakness is any other network within reach:
- Cellular data: every phone has its own unfiltered internet.
- Mobile hotspots: a friend's or sibling's phone becomes an open gateway.
- The neighbor's Wi-Fi: a remembered password from years ago still works.
- Your old router: if it's still broadcasting, devices may quietly reconnect to it.
Closing them
- Retire the old network: once every device has moved to the gateway, turn off the old router's Wi-Fi or change its password. This is the single highest-impact step.
- Audit saved networks on kids' devices — phones remember every Wi-Fi they've ever joined, and they reconnect automatically when in range.
- Hotspot settings: on a child's own phone, disable the personal hotspot; it's an unfiltered path for their other devices too.
- Watch the activity: if a device drops offline from the gateway at odd hours, it likely found another network.
The honest answer
You can't RF-proof the neighborhood — and a teen with cellular has a path you can't block. The gateway closes everything that passes through your walls; the rest is where the family conversation from our "talking to your kids" article earns its keep. Most kids don't route around rules they understand and can question — the access-request flow exists precisely so evading is the harder option.