KEEPING KIDS SAFE ON MOBILE DEVICES It is best to remember that even though mobile devices are smaller and more compact than the older PC type computers the dangers of unsupervised internet activity are still there. It is recommended that for younger users parents have all internet activity blocked unless it is supervised. For older children (teenage) it is recommended that some type of Parental Control Application be installed, as well as communication between parents and children about the dangers associated with unsupervised internet activity.
REPORT TO LAW ENFORCEMENT
✦ If your child or anyone you know has received child pornography
your child has been sexually solicited by someone ✦ Ifwho knows your child is under 18 your child receives-sexually explicit images from ✦ Ifsomeone who knows your child is under 18 years of age
CONTACT INFORMATION Calcasieu Parish Sheriffs Office Vice Division
(337) 491-7966 Lieutenant Rusty Broussard rjbroussard@cpso.com Detective Chris Romero cromero@cpso.com
Calcasieu parish Sheriff’s Office Vice Division
Monitoring Applications for Smart Phone, Ipods and Tablets
A Guide for Parents and Grandparents
A MESSAGE FROM THE SHERIFF
SMART PHONE, NOTE PAD & IPOD MONITORING
What does your child do on their mobile device? Are you worried they’re abusing their phone or tablet privileges? Let’s face it, kids these days are smarter than ever before being capable of finding a way around all restrictions set by parents even though we try our best to protect our kids from stumbling across harmful content online. Kids today may be tech savvy enough to know everything about their newest top-of-the-line cell phone. But they are still naive to the dangers of the cyber world and they don’t have the brain development to manage this new cell phone freedom in ways that are secure and strong. It is our responsibility as parents to monitor their activity and make sure that our kids are following a wise mobile phone internet policy. The only solution to prevent kids from getting indulged in questionable activities using cell phones and tablets is to download third party parental control or mobile monitoring software on our children’s phone or tablet.
Now days kids can easily find pornography or other offensive material on smart phone browsers. The good news is, there are many parental control applications that can block offensive web content and let you monitor your child’s activity on mobile devices to include, but not limited to, iPhones, iPads, iPods, Androids, etc. Parental Control Applications replace your default browser with a safe browser. Parental monitoring applications let you see your child’s browsing history from a remote web portal. All smart phones, iPods, tablets, etc. offer some parental control features on the device itself. These can be found by going to “Settings” then “General” then “Restrictions.” Here you can set restrictions on the device which is password protected. However these restrictions are not filters, so if you disable the internet it cannot be accessed until the restrictions are enabled. These types of restrictions are more suited for younger users when parents want to restrict any usage of things such as internet, camera, installing apps, etc.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding monitoring your child’s mobile devices, please call our Vice Division at (337) 491-7966.
We’re here to help!
USEFUL PARENTAL CONTROL APPS There are numerous Parental Control Apps that can be installed on mobile devices for older children. These apps allow the user to install parental controls that can be helpful with monitoring activity on the device. These apps vary in price, depending on what the user is looking for. The following are some of the apps that can be found in the app store and downloaded on your child’s mobile device: ✧ Mobicip Safe Browsing ✧ AVG Family Safety (for iPhone) ✧ Net Nanny 2.0 ✧ K9 Web Protection Browser ✧ B.O.B. The Parental Control ✧ McAfee Family Protection