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dnsUNFILTERED: Ben Gillenwater, The Family IT Guy
The conversation dives into the challenges of modern parenting in a digital age, including the risks associated with online gaming and social media. Ben emphasizes the importance of leading by example and maintaining open communication with children about online safety. He also provides practical tips for implementing technical solutions like DNS filtering and parental controls to create a safer online environment for kids.
Mikey Pruitt (00:00)
Welcome everybody to another episode of DNS unfiltered. Today I'm joined by Ben Gillenwater, the family IT guy, famous on TikTok. I don't know how many followers you have. I think it's like tens of thousands.
Ben (00:05)
Enjoy.
Currently
40,000 right now.
Mikey Pruitt (00:17)
40,000 awesome and Ben puts out a lot of great information for parents on how to keep their kids secure. But before we get into that, there's also some relatively touchy subjects within there so we can cover those. But first I wanted to get the audience more familiar with you Ben. Like where did you come from? How did this evolve?
Ben (00:37)
Man. Yeah, thanks, Mikey, for having me on. And I came from a very technical background. I've been in the tech industry for 30 years. ⁓ I've been a dad for four years. ⁓ My kids nine, but I came into his life when he was five. And the crossover between those two is what drove me to start being the family IT guy. So I like to say that I you know, I did a bunch of time
Mikey Pruitt (00:51)
You
Ben (01:07)
working with the US defense and intelligence industry. And so I like to tell people that I've spent a bunch of time doing national security and now I do family security. ⁓ And so I've been doing, you know, tech stuff, IT stuff since 95 professionally when I was 14, started working at a computer store, you know, and then was the chief technologist for a $10 billion IT company, ⁓ which got me involved with dealing with agencies like the NSA. And went on to become an entrepreneur and started a bunch of software companies, started a gym franchise. And now I focus most of my time on family IT. How do I help people figure out where to pay attention and what to focus on? Because there's a million things to know, but what are the few things they should really know and really put their energy in?
Mikey Pruitt (02:02)
So you're saying that your son really kicked off this family IT guy persona. And like, since you've been doing that, mean, 40,000 followers on TikTok is nothing to sneeze at. So there's a lot of people heeding your advice. Like, how does that make you feel, I guess is a good question.
Ben (02:07)
Yeah. Yeah.
Man, it feels great. It feels really, really great that I'm terribly grateful for the fact that I get to do this that I get to use my skill. So I'm really good at translating technical things into non technical terms. And I'm so grateful that I get to do that. And I've had many parents already contact me and I'm relatively new to this. I just started doing this since beginning of 2024.
And the TikTok thing is new too at the beginning. we're, we're towards the end of April, 2025 right now, the beginning of this month, I had 500 followers. So I'm adding it's, it's currently the graph is up and to the right. Like it's, I had, I have 40,000 followers right now. I had 30,000. So this is Thursday. had 30,000 on Sunday.
Mikey Pruitt (03:03)
What?
I had no idea it was going that fast.
Ben (03:20)
Dude, it's accelerating and it's beautiful. And it's so great that we have, I get to use the positive side of technology to help people deal with some of the negative sides, you know, and it's it's wonderful.
Mikey Pruitt (03:37)
So you just threw me off a little bit. I thought you were always at 30 or 40K. What's funny, how I discovered you was my wife, who is an avid TikTok user. And in IT, we can rack on TikTok all we want. But the fact remains that people use it, and they use it for more than just dance videos. So.
Ben (03:43)
No, this is new
They do. I know, that's new to me. I didn't know that. ⁓
Mikey Pruitt (04:01)
You're like I wasn't planning to do dance videos. So my wife sends me this ⁓ link to one of your videos one from like a month or two ago and she goes you have a podcast right? You should interview this guy. I'm like okay let me look into this this bin from the family ID and I started watching some of your videos and they are really good. So if your kids are on TikTok if you're a parent and you have to talk look up family.it.guy
Ben (04:14)
Heck yeah. Thanks, man.
Mikey Pruitt (04:30)
And look at some of Ben's videos because they are very helpful. Now, the audience for this podcast is usually tech people, people in IT, managed service provider staff. So they're aware of these things. However, there are some very practical tips that you give. So I'm curious, like, how did you separate your extensive knowledge dealing with governments and the NSA into like the three things that a parent should know today?
Ben (04:54)
Listen. man, I'll tell you, it's not easy. It's not easy to boil down. And then this is of course, why I do what I do. It's not easy to boil down a million things into three. But I knew that the simpler I make it, the more digestible it can be. And so I have broken it down into three things. So it's block harmful content, limit screen time, and avoid contact with strangers. Those three, I call them my three pillars.
And that's how my whole website is arranged. have a ton of free resources on there. That's all organized by those three. And there's a bunch of stuff within each of those three, but those are just such good places to start your focus and just sort of craft the, you know, yeah, where do I kind of put my energy? And, and, and, and within each of those. So for example, block harmful content. Okay. Well,
What does that mean? How do you identify harmful content? So I spent a lot of time going through that stuff. We can go through that stuff today if you'd like. ⁓ know, limiting screen time is the one that people might be most, they most might hear about the most. People talk about screen time the most, you know, and it's the most non-technical, like people know sometimes how often they spend staring at their screen every day, because their phone can actually tell them, you know, five hours a day, eight hours a day, whatever it might be. ⁓ In fact, the average ⁓ young person now like middle school student. 46 % of middle school students are on their phones almost constantly. Some of them averaging 10 to 14 hours a day. And so when I talk about limiting screen time, I'm talking about bringing moderation back into something that's currently very often unmoderated. And then blocking or avoiding contact with strangers
There are problems that exist now that didn't used to exist because kids have these internet connected systems in their pockets and those internet connected systems have internet connected cameras. When you combine those two things, it's a very, very ⁓ easy target for predators. And there are estimates that there's five to 800 cases of sex torsion per week in the United States.
And so this is where some of the, is why I draw people's attention to these areas because there's some sizable problems that are having a high order of magnitude effects on the mental health of children.
Mikey Pruitt (07:45)
First of all, wow, didn't know that the number was that staggering. ⁓ So that's something I do want to get into. And I want to take those three pillars of yours, but I want to do them in the opposite order and kind of dig into them and give some tips and techniques on each one. And I want to save block harmful content to last because it includes a very important piece, which is DNS filtering. But let's start with preventing stranger contact. And if you...
Ben (07:47)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Mikey Pruitt (08:13)
I want to go to familyitguy.com and click on the learn tab there. You'll see these pillars outlined in all of your articles, which are amazingly well structured. So good job on that. A lot of websites are difficult to navigate. This is super easy. And for the IT people out there, send someone else there and look, review it yourself. But the goal is to have someone else read that. That's not technically savvy. So when we're talking about preventing stranger contact,
Ben (08:26)
Thanks man. Yeah.
Mikey Pruitt (08:43)
What is it that we're preventing?
Ben (08:43)
Is it?
We're preventing, so, okay. We're used to thinking about stranger contact in the terms of, shoot, for all of human history. If you go to a place that's outside your home, maybe it's down the block, maybe it's another tribe, another village, you interact with people that you don't know, that you've never met. However, you could see them. You could see that's an adult, that's a man, that's a woman, that's a kid, that's a middle school student, that's a high school student.
And you can kind of use your brain's natural abilities to filter out how your parents might have guided you with like, hey, be careful not to share personal information with people that you don't know. But now that kids are being exposed to the other 6 billion people that are on the internet, now the situation is different. Our brains are not able to intake who is it on the other side, right? Often there is no actual
real time visual connection with who we're talking to. And so there's this huge problem with strangers going to places that kids are online. So for example, games, internet connected games that have online chat systems. So very common big ones, right? Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite. This is where predators go.
This is what they consider to be a target rich environment. They can go on there and they can say, Hey, hey kid, I'm a kid too. Let's be friends. Let's Long story short, they end up tricking them into letting their guard down, sharing private information, sharing explicit photos. They get pressured to share explicit photos, even young children. And once that photo is shared, once the private information is shared,
then the conversation changes. And they say, now I'm blackmailing you. Now I'm going to require you to give me more photos. I'm gonna require you to give me videos. The only way I'm gonna stop is if you give me more. And then they don't stop. Or if you give me money. And they have the kids and it's terrible. ⁓ And it even happens, the average age actually that this stuff occurs is 15. So even older kids that are meant to be and are more mature, than what we would consider children are falling victim to these things where the human nature of shame and embarrassment drives them to keep it to themselves. And it can result in self harm. It can result in suicide. And ⁓ it's actually the new Nigerian scam. So the people that used to be the Nigerian princes in the 2000s, now they're running blackmail scams.
And they actually distribute scripts and instructions to each other online via YouTube and TikTok on how to blackmail American high school students. And so when we talk about preventing stranger contact, it's within a new frame now that didn't used to exist. And it's very unfortunate that it's a thing, but it's a thing. And the FBI says that it's the fastest growing risk against children, the fastest growing crime that occurs against children.
And so we really need to take this into account as parents and really focus on educating our kids on how to be responsible and skeptical digital citizens and how to really take these things in. I'll tell you just to finish off this piece, some of this stuff really caught me by surprise when I started learning about it, because I didn't know about this stuff either until just recently.
But for example, a very common tactic that occurs is something that takes full advantage of natural biology and natural instincts. And so let's say that you have a 15 year old boy that's in high school, good kid, goes to church, gets good grades, plays on the sports teams, has a bunch of friends, great relationship with his parents, open, honest, transparent, gets a message from a girl that goes to a school in a nearby town. Hey, I think you're really cute. And I'm really cute too.
And so let's chat. Let's become flirtatious. The girl then sends a photo of herself, partially or fully nude. Hey, why don't you send me one back in return? Natural biological instincts. The kid sends one back. Now the girl exposes herself as a blackmailer. And now this kid, this good kid, just went from everything's fine to 20 minutes later, his entire life just fell apart.
And I was just in tears reading stories about this last night, researching for a video I'm gonna make soon. Reading about a kid whose name was Jordan DeMay. And this is exactly what happened to him. And he shot himself. And it's horrific and it's a real thing. And I think people need to know so that they're at least informed as to what's going on so that we don't take for granted what it means to hand a kid a smartphone without filters. and with social media and with a camera. Because the combination of an online chat system and a camera is how these things take place.
Mikey Pruitt (14:12)
That is a very heavy story and thank you for sharing it and enlightening everyone about it. There were two things specifically that you called out on kind of that pillar, which were chat content, which you'd mentioned. And you also mentioned user generated content. For example, you said, talked about the islands created in Fortnite by other players and Roblox is like entirely user generated games.
Ben (14:35)
Yeah, that's right.
Mikey Pruitt (14:41)
Talk about that user generated side for a second.
Ben (14:44)
Yeah, so the user generated side is where ⁓ that's where you have. So these modern gaming systems are amazing, right? Roblox is actually a game development platform. They use a language called Lua and it it allows players to create their own games and there's spectacular games. mean, there's I've read that there's like 40 million games on Roblox and some of them are huge.
It's amazing technology. ⁓ So of course, some of the games end up with adult themes, right? Because anybody can create one. And the moderators, picking on Roblox in particular, because I like to pick on them because I find some of their stuff a bit neglectful, to be honest, but they supposedly have over 2000 moderators, but they just can't keep up. It's just too much. And so you end up with games that, let's say you allow, your child to play Roblox and you turn on all the parental controls and you say my kids eight years old and so that I did this myself I played as an eight year old and experienced what I'm about to tell you. My kids eight I'm going to turn off chat I'm going to tell the system that like hey I only want them to play games that are suitable for eight year olds. ⁓ They there as you browse through the games in the system there are ones that slip through the cracks. When I played with my eight year old profile.
I got to play a game called public bathroom, where I walk into this big open environment. And there's a swimming pool. And there's beds around the outer edge of the room. And there's people on those beds humping each other. And then I go into the actual like bathroom area. It's like a public, regular public bathroom with stalls. There's people going in and out of the stalls together. People characters, you know, but there's people behind the keyboard, of course. You go further.
Mikey Pruitt (16:33)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (16:38)
Into the next part of the bathroom and there's bathtubs and where you can close the screen and go into the bathtub and there's multiple people in the bathtubs humping each other. And so when it comes to user generated content. I like to just bring awareness to the fact that this is a these systems are so large scale that moderation cannot keep up and it's not always accurate. Fortnite for example has does it actually like a better job at moderation than Roblox does.
But a lot of their games that are built are self reported as to like, what age level is this game appropriate for? And they're not all accurate. And so that on that part, and the user generated content part, I bring awareness to that because that's not necessarily where the sex distortion stuff happens. And we're like the actual like, overt harm occurs like physical harm. But it can simply expose kids to things that you may not want them exposed to.
And so I like to say to people, ⁓ these systems, especially Roblox, your kid, think about it like this, your kid is old enough to play Roblox when they're old enough to see porn. Because they will come across, possibly likely in some cases, ⁓ sexually inappropriate content.
Mikey Pruitt (18:00)
It's truly unfortunate. We sit here, and we sit, like the business that I'm in, we're here to protect people from threats, but we also protect people from inappropriate content. But as you're saying, it is challenging to keep parents informed on how to do those things. And it sounds like you're saying perhaps those games are just
Ben (18:03)
It's very unfortunate. I hate it. You know, it's terrible.
Mikey Pruitt (18:28)
You just off limits if you really want to protect your child from that inappropriate content.
Ben (18:31)
Yeah.
I think so, right? And that's what I like to highlight to people is like, hey, I'm not here to tell anybody what to do. Because one of the things I love most about being a human is the fact that we all get to do our own thing and that there are no rules. Whether or not people think there are, there are no rules, right? We get to decide our own thing. We get to craft our family dynamics the way we want to craft them. So absolutely do your thing. Parent your kids the way you want to parent them.
I just like to raise the awareness so that people are informed. And actually I'll highlight specifically that ⁓ Roblox in particular could implement, like us in the tech industry, we know about whitelists and blacklists. Roblox could theoretically implement a whitelist for parents of younger children to say, let me go actually find the games that I like and let me expose my child to just those.
You know, so like YouTube Kids has a feature for that, which is wonderful. ⁓ But I will also highlight that Minecraft does a fantastic job at parental controls. Minecraft actually offers an offline mode where kids can play by themselves. So there is no stranger interaction. After that, they offer what they call private realms. And now you have to pay for this. It's a subscription service, but it allows parents to
create a private gaming area, and actually singularly approve the specific friends that are allowed to play with them. So they can actually do internet multiplayer, open world games with people that the parent approves. And so if they go, look, I'm just going to let you play with the people that you know, at your school, you can do that. But on Roblox and Fortnite, you can't go to that extent.
So I guide people with younger kids towards Minecraft because they've got some really great stuff.
Mikey Pruitt (20:27)
But it sounds like always, no matter the age of the kid, perhaps put in the work to see what they're doing, be like their conscience on their shoulder to see what's happening. And that allow list, so like we have a thing called an allow list only policy, where you just block everything and you allow, you just allow the seven websites that are allowed by, think of like an IoT device, like a thermostat.
Ben (20:35)
Yeah, that's like the modern version of the whitelist, right?
Mikey Pruitt (20:54)
It doesn't need to talk to any other websites other than its update server and status server. That's it. That's all it needs.
Ben (20:58)
Yeah. That's right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, man.
And so yeah, I think there's, there's ways to go about this stuff. Now I will say, both Fortnite and Roblox both let you turn off chat. That is fundamental. Chat is a big, big risk to kids. So all three platforms allow for that, which is huge. And then yes, the parental stuff. It's such here's the thing I like about as odd as this is going to sound.
I love how grossly exaggerated the problems are on these platforms, because it allows for a more obvious conversation with kids. Because especially for younger kids, nuance is harder to grasp. But when the thing is big and chunky, you can have conversations about it, you can teach them about it, you can, it's an opportunity to introduce them to this stuff, because this stuff is not going away. Right? This is just the beginning.
Mikey Pruitt (21:43)
Right.
Ben (21:57)
And so it's really cool opportunity to teach the kids about things. And if you do want to let them play these games, it's cool. You can have an ongoing conversation. You can keep an eye on what they're playing. And so there's a lot of good stuff here.
Mikey Pruitt (22:11)
Well, let's skip to the other pillar you have for screen time. And perhaps we can get into the, ⁓ you kind of hinted on there, the YouTube for kids is sometimes I'd always say. also like, you know, maybe, yeah, like ⁓ adult themes may slip into Disney movies if you look hard enough, things like that. So like talk to me about this screen time limitation, why it's important.
Ben (22:16)
Yeah. It's an ironic name given its normal behavior.
So the main thing that I think about with screen time is addiction. So all these tech plat we all all of us in the tech industry know that if you ask most software companies, what is your like we call things like the North Star KPI? What is your primary measurement of performance to know if you're doing what you're supposed to do from a business perspective and the North Star KPI for many platforms is time. How much time does each unique visitor and each unique player and viewer give us every day and every week and every month. And so the incentives, I like the phrase that what gets measured gets done. Right. And so if you're measuring against time, we want to maximize exposure time. Therefore, you must design your system to be as addictive as possible. It's just a natural incentive mechanism. And so the you end up with algorithms that are addictive, primarily in social media platforms. It's like the biggest easiest example. And then you end up with addictive algorithms and video platforms where you put the thing on autoplay. And it's like, let me play the thing that I think is going to get you to keep watching. And those things also contain different stimulus levels. So I love looking at things through the filter of stimulus levels. What baseline level of stimulus are we exposing our kids to? And where are we putting them with respect to what do they need? What do they expect to be normal? How much stimulus do they need? How uncomfortable are they with being bored? You know, and so if you look at a lot of videos, you've got bright colors, you've got loud sounds.
You've got a lot of changing scene, scene, scene, scene, scene, cut, cut, cut, cut. That's high stimulus. That's how you identify high stimulus. And so when I talk about less screen time, it's how do you become aware of the addictive mechanisms that exist in these systems? And how do you, again, opportunity, right? How do you talk to your kids about that and let them know this is what addiction feels like? This is what addiction is when you feel drawn back to something, when you're upset because you can't have it, that's a sign that you're addicted to it. And that's a sign that maybe that's unhealthy. And so that's what I look at when I think about less screen time.
Mikey Pruitt (25:18)
So this is the video that my wife sent me. It was all about Scream Time because we struggle with this. I have a three year old son and he is infatuated or addicted to, a better word, to Paw Patrol, the kids show. You know, it's a fine show. But just like you say, and we've noticed this with other programming, I won't mention it. Sorry to call Paw Patrol specifically, but anyway, it's so there's always movement. There's a dog's tail wagging. The backgrounds are shifting behind the characters.
Ben (25:31)
Yeah, right.
Mikey Pruitt (25:48)
The sun is moving or clouds are moving or something is always happening in the background and the cuts are very, very fast. So it's like attention, attention, attention. And what we've done, because we can't get rid of ball patrol now, we'll work on that. But we've slowed it down to a, I think we're at like 0.75 % speed, just so that it's a bit slower.
Ben (26:02)
Yeah ⁓ yeah.
Dude, that's a great idea, man. How's that work? Is that good? Because I like that idea.
Mikey Pruitt (26:13)
Yeah, it's actually, you can't tell it's slowed down that much. Like certainly because it's moving so fast, you can barely notice it, that it's slowed a little bit, but little pro tip for the other parents out there.
Ben (26:26)
Wow, that's, it's so funny,
man. And it's so like to me, I kind of laugh because I speak slowly. And I have people on TikTok, where my videos are the slowest thing they've ever seen, right? And people respond to like, bro, you got to talk faster, man. Come on, come on, come on. And so people speed my stuff up, you know, but it's like, yeah, so I love the idea of slowing it down. So if you have a thing that's like bam, bam, you just slow it down and make it, make it a little more chill. That's cool.
Mikey Pruitt (26:42)
So let's talk about ⁓ YouTube for kids. So there was this conspiracy about what was called Elsagate a few years back. And now that's kind of, seems like it's kind of resurging where these just really odd videos appear like way down in the feed of a child that's on like autoplay.
Ben (27:10)
Yeah, yeah, this stuff. I found it myself. ⁓ My kid came across that kind of stuff where you've got like Disney characters doing real sexual stuff with each other, you know, like they've got their little outfits on but the positions that they're in and the ways they're touching each other and on each other and like, Whoa, man, I don't want my four year old like, get like all of sudden his or her brain is got that in there now. Like, what the heck, you know?
And I always like to think back to the fact and rest in peace to Susan, the ex CEO of YouTube. But when she was alive, she was the CEO of YouTube. She's a grandma. And yet there's this product YouTube kids that that produces stuff that is man like there's something going on there where people are slipping past the filters. They're nightmare stuff. You got sexual stuff.
The one thing that I'll give them and it's it's a it's a feature that not a lot of people know about is this ⁓ feature called approved content only. And if you go into your kids YouTube kids app, and you go to the settings, it's where you can define what age they're in. And to the far left of that, if you scroll is the approved content only mode. And when you do that, it becomes only it will only show turns off search. And it only shows your kid the videos you've selected. So you can select videos, can select channels, and you can select playlists like the YouTube kids people make playlists. And you can go into a channel and you can deselect individual videos if you want, you know, or into a playlist and do the same thing. And then further, if you pay for YouTube premium, which I think is 10 bucks a month or something, ⁓ then you can get rid of the ads. And so you can turn it into
Mikey Pruitt (28:42)
Mm-hmm.
Ben (29:02)
A totally pre approved video app, which is funny. like a it's a dra, it's 180 degree different from how the app behaves on its own otherwise.
Mikey Pruitt (29:13)
Yeah, that's a really good tip. ⁓ I did not know that feature was there. But I will go check it out later today.
Ben (29:17)
Yeah, it's it's great,
man. Like once it's configured, it's a whole new deal. It's great.
Mikey Pruitt (29:23)
So I'll be like, Miss Rachel, check. And then everything else, we'll see.
Ben (29:26)
Yes, and number blocks. Have you guys checked out number blocks? Yeah. ⁓
Mikey Pruitt (29:30)
I've got number blocks. Love it. Teach them math like fun math. This is great.
Ben (29:37)
Yeah, man, I'm all about that.
Mikey Pruitt (29:38)
So let's move to the last, the other pillar you have, block harmful content. This is kind of where a lot of ⁓ activity like work, more work on the parental end can happen because there's like things to do that can drastically prevent these other things from happening because they put physical, well, technical safeguards in place that technically limit what is available. So talk to me about that.
Ben (30:07)
Yeah, I agree. Block harmful content can be, you know, a tall order because you have to know about and have awareness about what to block and or what to allow depending on the approach you take. So for like the younger kids, if you go like a white list and an allow list, and you say, okay, I'm just going to approve the things that I only the things I want them to see and they can see nothing else.
That's like a method of blocking harmful content. If you have the right tools, so like Apple Screen Time, Google Family Link, Microsoft has like a family parental control system. On Chromebooks, the Google Family Link works on there. And you can do that kind of, and then you could have the blacklist or the blocklist of, as the kids get more mature, actually let them access everything except for these few things. But then you have to kind of know, like, well, what are those things?
And so so that is challenging. And so what I like, and very, you know, applicable to DNS filters ⁓ is there's some wonderful people out there on the internet that have put together lists, and they maintain the lists. So there's a guy called, I don't know if it's a guy, I'm assuming how Gezi, how Gazi something have you heard of this guy, he makes some DNS filter lists. ⁓
Mikey Pruitt (31:29)
I haven't heard of that one specifically.
Ben (31:32)
to double check on the the spelling of it and the name but their point being that there are people and companies perhaps like yours and Next DNS and others that that maintain the lists for you so that you can just choose categories so you can say okay I want to allow educational categories but I want to block adult stuff I want to block ads I want to block trackers you know privacy related things and so I like to point people towards these existing tools, especially the stuff that's free, that's built into the operating system on most devices. So like the FamilyLink and the ScreenTime, because they also have categories that you can check and uncheck. That way you don't have to study this stuff yourself. Now, the caveat is that no filters are perfect, right? But man, if you can get 99 % of the way there by checking a box, I think you should do that, you know?
And so yeah, so that's how I kind of basically think about the block harmful content thing. did you find it?
Mikey Pruitt (32:39)
Yeah, I think that's it right there.
Ben (32:41)
Me get closer to my screen. Yeah, that's the one. he's got, ⁓ Hagezi has ⁓ different levels of filters. And you can go the super duper one that just blocks everything. And then because I think that as a kid matures and ages, you kind of, know, you should sort of dial down very carefully the filters. So you can start off aggressive, you know, with like a three year old, you can start off really aggressive.
Mikey Pruitt (32:43)
That's a GitHub link.
Ben (33:11)
And then as the kid gets in the middle school and high school and stuff, you can kind of turn the dials down a little bit. so Hagezi has some options there, and I really like his.
Mikey Pruitt (33:20)
Yeah, and it was updated four hours ago. So pretty up to date. I would say, I would complain that four hours is not necessarily fast enough for the business threat intelligence feeds, but good for families.
Ben (33:23)
Well, there you go, man. Awesome. I love that. mean, thank you. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, man. So thank you to Hagezi. Thank you for doing that.
Mikey Pruitt (33:40)
Yes, great job. ⁓ And it's interesting. So you've mentioned ⁓ NextDNS, which is a great option for families. Obviously, I work for DNS filter, kind of a competitor to NextDNS. But that's OK, because we kind of focus on business to business. NextDNS, super easy to deploy for families. But I wanted to focus a bit more on why DNS filtering specifically.
Ben (33:51)
Yeah. ⁓ yeah. man. Great. That's one of the reasons I was so excited to come on your podcast because this is something that you and I and the tech community, we know what these things are. We understand how TCP IP works. it's one of those things that if you're not an IT, if you're not a network engineer, that what the heck is DNS, right? It's this behind the scene mechanism that people are not aware of that.
Mikey Pruitt (34:11)
Yeah.
Ben (34:33)
Allows your computer and your phones to communicate on the Internet so that you're able to type in English letters of Google.com instead of memorizing the IP address that Google.com uses. And so I it's one of the things I've sort of brought from my network engineering background and recognized as a tool for families. And the way I like to look at it is that I like to look at technology and layers. And so if we work our way from the top down, and in very fundamental sort of terms, you have the piece of your tech that comes out of the screen and hits your eyeballs. That's where the human interacts with the system, right? underneath that layer, you have where the software that does that stuff that that that communicates with your eyeballs, talks to its servers and its control systems. And you kind of keep working your way all the way down until you eventually get to like the physical cables that actually interconnect systems like the copper and the fiber. And so I like to approach security from in terms of layers by working my way from the bottom up. So first, I like to apply the first thing that I put on all of my devices and all the networks that I deal with for my house and for my consulting clients is a DNS filter. So it's this like easy thing to apply. That's towards the bottom of the layers that that are that we have exposure to.
And so you start there. So then once you have DNS filters in place, then the next thing you do is you go up to the operating system level. And that's where you have Apple Screen Time and Google Family Link. These things are, you could consider them at the operating system level. And then sitting on top of the operating system are the applications. And at the application level, you have additional parental controls there. So we talked about Roblox and Fortnite and Minecraft. Those exist at the application level. So I think security should always be done with multiple layers so that it can be most comprehensive.
One of the things that I got exposed to working with the defense community is this military term of one is none and two is one. And I take the same approach here. If you put one of those things in place, yes, it's a lot better than nothing. But if you put two in place, now you've got backups, you've got contingencies. So that if the first thing doesn't get it, maybe the second thing will get it. But I always like to run at least three. Like I run three backup systems on my computer.
I run three layers of filters on the stuff that I'm exposed to, that my kids are exposed to. So, yeah, I always start with DNS filters and then OS controls and then app controls.
Mikey Pruitt (37:11)
You're almost following the OSI model there.
Ben (37:14)
That's right, that's my super simple family-facing OSI model.
Mikey Pruitt (37:20)
Yeah, that wow. That's like a new product coming out of family familyitguy.com the the family osi model You have to find a different name because i've been like osi. What does that mean?
Ben (37:25)
Amen. I'm open to that. Yeah, the family OSP, I love that. Yeah, like, whoa, bro, too much, too much.
Mikey Pruitt (37:33)
Too much. So DNS filtering, a very effective ⁓ layer to put into place. So that kind of like wraps up our three pillars. Like how do you deliver this to parents? What's your spiel to them? For the audience so that they can kind of let others know how important this stuff is. People in their lives, families and friends and relatives. How does that go?
Ben (37:56)
Yeah.
Well, the way I like to approach things in general is the same same approach I take here, which is, if we're going to discuss a thing, especially an important thing, the first thing we need to do is be on the same page as to what we're trying to accomplish. And so in some aspects, what problem are we trying to solve, or avoid. And so the first thing I do when I talk to people when I give lectures, and the way I structure some of my materials, is I always address the problem first.
I want to make sure that we're all in the same page as to what it is that we're talking about. What are we trying to resolve? What are we trying to accomplish? And then once we're all kind of nodding our heads and like, okay, okay, yes, I understand. That's the thing we're talking about. So we're talking about screen time. We're talking about harmful content. We're talking about strangers. Okay. Now that we're on the same page for the problem, now we can talk about what are we going to do about it and how are we going to know if we've succeeded? And so I like to structure my stuff like that. And, and, and specifically,
The approach that I take within that model is once we agree on the problem and once we're on the same page, then I first like to say, okay, the first solution that I like to propose is always not technical. The first solution for me is leading by example. How do I behave with the tech in my life? How do I behave with my screen time, with my addictive behaviors? How do I approach strangers on the internet?
⁓ How do I approach harmful content? And then once I'm leading by example, and I feel like I'm doing that in healthy way, that then allows me to have conversations with my kids and do the next most important fundamental thing, which is teaching them about this and being very transparent as to as they gain exposure to things, letting them know about what exists in those arenas and the problems that they need to be aware of.
So one of the things that's very satisfying for me doing the work I do is I get contacted by parents that say, showed my seven year old your video on Roblox and now they get it and they don't want to play Roblox. And that's amazing. And so I'm so grateful that I get to help facilitate that conversation. But I think that's like a fundamental thing and it must be recurring. Must have ongoing conversations because they're going to go to their friend's house that has no filters. They're going to go to school, and their friends are gonna have iPhones with no filters. And so they need to know like what this stuff is, how to find it, how to identify it. So you're leading by example, you're communicating with your kids, you're being transparent, you're telling them what to look out for and what to do and when to come talk to you when there's a problem. And then you can implement family dynamic stuff like TechFree Tuesdays. I love this like simple kind of bite size concept where
When everybody gets home from work and school on Tuesdays, they walk in the door, phone goes in the drawer. They don't look at it until the next morning. The whole rest of the day is parents first. Parents first, man. That's right. But dude, it's so great. So like we do it on Sundays. We do all day Sunday. Moment we wake up on Sunday to when we go to bed Sunday, no outside world, no internet, no devices, no technology.
Mikey Pruitt (40:59)
Parents too?
Ben (41:17)
We go outside, we ride bikes, we play Monopoly, we do all these other things. It's the best day of the week. So find like a bite sized. In fact, even more bite sized than TechFreeTuesday. Dinner tonight, dinner tonight, phones are away. In fact, very important on this, this is a psychological thing that's been studied. They need to be in a different room. If they're in the same room, they're still talking to your brain. They're still pulling your attention. They gotta be in a different room.
Mikey Pruitt (41:41)
Hmm.
Ben (41:45)
You all can have dinner together for let's say 30 minutes or an hour. No distractions, no outside world, right? So find bite sized ways to approach change because the only way to improve a situation is to accept the fact that you must change your behavior in order to change the outcome. But change is very scary and it's very difficult.
And so do it in a small bite size pieces as you can. Okay, so now you've done those things. So you've leading, you're leading by example, you're talking to your kids, you're teaching your kids, you're being transparent, you're practicing this stuff together. Then the technical stuff comes. How do you implement controls and filters and blocks and whatnot that are appropriate for how you want to run your family? And, and then, and what tools do you choose to do that? And that's where I try to guide people on stuff that's easy to use.
So the technical stuff is last. The family stuff, the personal stuff comes first.
Mikey Pruitt (42:46)
You also just described the perfect sales call as well. You're like, let's discuss the pain points. What are we talking about? What are our feelings on that? What are some coping ways that we handle it? And finally, the technical solution that you can pay me for.
Ben (42:51)
Yeah, there you go. Yes. ⁓
Right at the end with a bow. I actually learned it from being in a sales team when I worked for Blackberry in 2010. I was the technical guy on the team and I was fortunate enough to work amongst these brilliant salespeople and they taught me that.
Mikey Pruitt (43:21)
Well, it works. Apparently, it works on a lot of things. Because you are selling this idea. There is a better path. In my opinion, it's a better path. You can do what you want. We're all free here. But this is my pitch. Enjoy it.
Ben (43:23)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right. That's right. does, man.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Yeah, exactly.
It's great. Like, hey, like, here's my opinion. Here's my thoughts. Here's the information that informs my thoughts. Do what you will if it's helpful to you. You know, God bless. ⁓
Mikey Pruitt (43:53)
That is so awesome, Ben.
I had such a great time talking about this with you. I'm going to be religiously following your TikTok, and I hope everyone in the audience is. Again, that is familyit.guy on TikTok, and you can find Ben at his website too, familyitguy.com. Thank you, Ben.
Ben (44:01)
You're welcome. And thank you very much, Mikey.