alt Hacker NewsI can't believe in 2025, nearly 2026, that anyone would seriously suggest a header as a valid way of doing anything like this. Headers can be spoofed, modified along the way, or flat out ignored. DNT header is the obvious go to example here.
An aspiring teen could set up an RPi that modifies headers for all traffic on the network that the parental units never even know about. I'd venture there would be plenty of YT, TikTok, Discord threads, etc that would provide a step-by-step set of instructions to do it. Probably just point to an image to download to copy to your SD and voila.
Replies
This would require SSL interception, which requires a custom certificate on the end device.
If your kid can figure out how to install a custom certificate on their device and MITM SSL to evade filters, (a) you never secured the device (b) you already lost long ago and (c) let’s get that kid a job or a scholarship.
> An aspiring teen could set up an RPi that modifies headers for all traffic on the network that the parental units never even know about
An aspiring teen could just have sex with another aspiring teen...
You won't stop teenagers from finding a way to be teenagers. Part of being a teenager is learning how to subvert the rules set by adults to fulfil one's hormonal imperative.
If your goal is to make something teenager proof, you have already failed before you started. Many teenagers have the intellectual capacity of full grown adults, it is their emotional intelligence and life experience that is lacking. Doing any more than putting a simple padlock on the door will not stop them, the same way a determined adult couldn't really be stopped, and teenagers are determined in most everything they try by default.
> An aspiring teen could set up an RPi
If circumventing a measure requires setting up a RPi and modifying headers, I would call it widely successful, that would be less than a thousandth of kids.
DNT is a client header that failed to get traction and never did anything useful. RTA is a server header and small children will not be doing this for the most part and parents can of course disable parental controls assuming one day they are enabled by default for child accounts. Like I said, it's not perfect. Teens can of course bypass this a million different ways. For every 100 million dollars a company spends to lock teens out of something is just an extra 5 lines of python or 15 seconds of their time on AI if that. Currently many teens watch pirated movies and porn together in VR and assorted games that allow placing a media player in G-rated world building games.
It's probably worth noting that if teens can not view porn, they will likely produce porn making an entirely new tax free underground market on Tor or other networks.
This is just for keeping small children out. Nobody in the history or future of earth have ever or will ever locked teens out of a thing. Archive this comment so we can review it at a later time.