Channel only solution used by businesses and ISP’s for the first time to offer service directly to home users to support COVID-19 response
FlashStart has announced it will offer three months of free service for home workers, students and families as part of its commitment to supporting people through the COVID-19 health crisis.
FlashStart, a brand of Collini Consulting Group, is focused exclusively on Internet content filtering and is used in more than 100 countries to inspect more than 1.5Billion web visits every day. The service is traditionally only available through its network of value-added resellers, telecommunication providers and ISP’s such as liberty-i.com in the UK.
However, FlashStart has decided to offer its service, at no-cost for a three-month period, directly to home-workers, students and families via direct access from its website. The solution requires no software downloads and uses just a simple configuration change in any home cable / DSL router making it compatible with all UK ISP’s services including BT, Virgin, TalkTalk and Sky Broadband.
At a technical level, the service is used for resolving URL addresses through DNS queries and does not offer any reverse proxy capabilities, and as such has no impact on bandwidth or broadband speeds.
“We have had an increase in demand from our channel partners that mostly serve business customers over the last month, but we recognise families and remote workers still need a simple and free way of filtering malware, stopping cyberbullying and blocking adult content that is easy to setup without additional costs,” explains Francesco Collini, CEO for FlashStart.
FlashStart can be setup to protect all devices within the home that connect to the Internet via a browser including PC’s, laptops, tablets, smartphones, consoles and smart TVs. Parents can use FlashStart to block unacceptable content, create a cut-off time to access gaming or social media sites and block nasty malware sites. The service can also include and exclude individual devices and set different thresholds for the type of content that is blocked as well as allowing access to, on a case-by-case basis, individual websites on request.
“There has been a surge in the creation of new domains within URL terms like ‘corona’, ‘covid’, ‘epidemic’, ‘pandemic’ and ‘Wuhan’ and only a very small part of these are legitimate informational sites,” says Francesco Collini. “The vast majority are fraudulent sites aiming to trick people into fake purchases or spreading dangerous misinformation. We are actively adding to our filtering lists on a daily basis and even though all of our staff in Italy are now working remotely, we will continue to maintain and update our technology and provide online support to both our paid and free users to the best of our ability.”
FlashStart is fully GDPR compliant and maintains no identifiable logs of Internet activity to ensure absolute privacy for users. The three-month offer requires no credit card or upfront payment to access and is available via https://flashstart.com/smartworker/
Established in 2001 and headquartered in Cesena, Italy. The owners of FlashStart, Francesco Collini and David Brebner, are passionate about Internet protection, especially about making it easy to access and affordable. “We believe Internet freedom does not contradict with filtering malware, stopping cyberbullying, removing adult content as long as the control is in the hands of the people and not mandated by the state,” says Francesco Collini.
“We are not a huge corporation so this is a significant financial commitment for us but we think it is the right thing to do,” David Brebner adds, “We are initially offering three months but we will review this position and possibly extend this offer if the health situation has not improved. From all of us at FlashStart, please be safe and stay healthy.”