Mobile Protector on the Today Show

Clip courtesy of the The Today Show

Spoke with Karl on the Today Show this morning about a new device out of the US called Protector, which is a service offered by the company that brought us the Taser volt gun, but no-where near as dangerous!

Protector works on multiple devices, each managed through an intuitive control panel accessible through a smart phone, PC, MAC or smart TV. Parents can control who their children interact with and monitor their mobile phone activity and driving behavior at any time – and change permissions and settings in real time

Protector works by allowing parents to vet calls on their child’s mobile phone. It basically gives parents control over who their child is in contact with over the mobile network. Parents will get an incoming call via the service so they can approve of the caller. This is also true of texts, too. If they approve of the caller, then the call can go through. However before kids get too upset at every called being monitored, there is a ‘favourites’ function that can be set up by a parent that allows certain callers to go forward.

And just to make sure that nothing really untoward is happening, the company has set up an algorithm that can tell if your child is sending or receiving nude photographs.

Finally there are its GPS capabilities, which not only allows you to see where you teenager is, but if they are driving, this application apparently records the speeds you child has done in their car, and the accelerometer records if the car has had a fender bender. As the application is not available in the country yet, I have yet to have a play with it, but when it comes out, it will certainly be worth checking out.