Irish start up tackles global issue of cyber-bullying on mobiles [dcu.ie]
- Published: 03 February 2011
Associate Mobile’s First Product Helps Parents to Supervise Young Children’s Mobiles
An Irish company has developed a parental supervision platform for mobiles called mobile minder. For just €4.99 a month Mobileminder gives parents peace of mind when it comes to their children and their mobile phones. It allows a parent to supervise remotely, their children's mobile activities including calls and texts to ensure they are not being bullied.
More and more parents are purchasing phones for their children however there are potential dangers for children with mobiles and with the growing number of cases of cyber bullying, grooming and sexting how do parents really know that their children are safe on their mobiles. In a recent poll of it's kind the children’s charity, NCH (UK) found that one in five 11 to 19 year olds had been bullied, harassed or threatened via SMS Text.
“As the prices of smartphones continue to fall and their popularity increase, they are becoming a must have for kids and teens,” said Don Corbett, CEO of Associate Mobile. “Many parents are installing parental control software on their desktop computers and there are many Internet solutions for supervising personal computer usage but the new reality is that children are now walking around with mini computers in their pockets. We decided to develop mobileminder to give parents a similar set of tools, that are already available for desktops, to supervise their children’s mobiles activities.” The Parental Controls Dashboard is an easy-to-use, web-based software, which provides parents with insight into their children’s mobile activities and location to help ensure their safety. Mobileminder’s Parental Control Dashboard enables parents to view the people contacting their child, utilize remote location services, and monitor messages sent to and from their child’s phone. It even goes further by providing a system that will notify parents to texts with specific words. This covers any signs of cyber bullying, sexting or unusual behaviour. Mobileminder’s location system allows parents to know where their children are at any time. So in addition to being alerted to any signs of bullying, parents no longer have to rely on a call or text to know if their child has arrived at their destination safely.
Full Story: www.dcu.ie
