Editorial standards. How these guides get written.

Our guides are published under the Defenras name rather than an individual byline. That means the standards behind them have to be written down, so you can judge the work rather than a personal reputation. This is that document.

Who writes these

Guides are produced by the Defenras team and published under the company name. We're a software company, and the expertise we can legitimately claim is technical: how filtering works, how devices and platforms actually behave, and where parental controls fail in practice. That's what most of our content is about.

Where a subject falls outside that — the clinical, legal, or safeguarding aspects of grooming, sextortion, self-harm, or disordered eating — we do not present ourselves as the authority. We describe what the organisations that hold that expertise say, and we link directly to them so you can go to the source.

How guides are researched

• Platform behaviour is verified against the platform. Menu paths, setting names, and the exact effect of a toggle are checked against the current version of the operating system or app, not reproduced from another article.
• Limitations are stated. If a setting only covers one browser, lapses at a certain age, or is trivially reversed by a child, the guide says so. A control that looks effective but isn't is worse than no control, because it produces false confidence.
• Competitors are described accurately. Where another product does something better than ours, we name it and explain why. Comparison tables include rows we lose.
• Statistics are used sparingly. We would rather write "this is the fastest-growing threat in this category" and attribute it than publish a precise-sounding figure we can't source. Numbers that appear are attributed to the body that produced them.

Crisis and safety information

Some of our guides cover situations where a parent may be acting under real pressure — an image has been shared, a child has disclosed something, someone is in danger. That content is held to a stricter standard.

• Helpline numbers and reporting routes are taken from the issuing organisation — NCMEC, the CyberTipline, Cybertip.ca, CEOP, the eSafety Commissioner, 988, Samaritans, Lifeline — and never from secondary sources.
• Each one is linked directly, so a parent can reach the service in one click rather than retyping an address during an emergency.
• Crisis resources appear near the top of any guide where someone might be reading in an emergency, not buried at the end.
• We do not give clinical or legal advice. Where a situation calls for a doctor, a therapist, a lawyer, or the police, the guide says so plainly instead of substituting itself for one.

Where we have a commercial interest

We sell parental control software, and most of our guides mention it. Rather than pretend otherwise, we hold ourselves to three rules:

1. The free option is named first when it's sufficient. Several guides tell you that Apple Screen Time or Google Family Link will do the job and you don't need to buy anything.
2. Product claims match what the software does. If a feature is on-demand rather than continuous, or Android-only, the guide says which.
3. We don't invent competitor weaknesses. Comparisons list what the other product does better, and we recommend it where it genuinely fits better.

We do not run advertising, accept sponsored placement, or use affiliate links.

Updates and accuracy over time

Guides in this category go stale in specific ways: operating systems move settings, platforms change policies and minimum ages, apps rebrand, and helpline numbers occasionally change.

• Every guide carries a visible last-updated date.
• Guides are revised when the underlying platform behaviour changes, rather than on a fixed schedule.
• Crisis contact details are re-checked against the issuing organisation when a guide is revised.
• When a correction changes the substance of a guide, the change is made rather than quietly left — see below.

Corrections

We publish a lot, about platforms that change constantly. Some of it will be wrong.

If you find an error — a setting that has moved, a claim that no longer holds, a number that's out of date, or a statement about our own product that doesn't match what it does — email [email protected] with the page and what's wrong. That address reaches a person.

What we'd like to add

Being straightforward about the gap: our safeguarding and mental-health content is currently written from published guidance by people whose expertise is software, not clinical practice. Independent review of that material by a qualified professional would make it better, and we'd rather name that as a limitation than imply a review process we don't have.

If you work in child safeguarding, adolescent mental health, or online exploitation and would be willing to review this material, we'd genuinely like to hear from you: [email protected].

More about the company and how the blocklists are maintained is on our about page.