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I have deep resentment for my parents and I fear when they call me upstairs now if fear I will be harshly punished even if I have nothing to hide. I don't care if my parents monitor my phone. I don't really do anything worrisome online. But what really irks me is when they take the device at random intervals for "my safety".
The constant fear that I will be suddenly stopped and forced to readjust my situation is taking a bigger toll on my day-to-day mood than anything else. I do not understand why parents are monitoring there kids phones. Even though I am currently residing with my mom at this time, i do feel that a few boundary rules should be present.
From the time I received my first cell-phone, she has always complained that I spend too much time on my phone. I could understand her point of view when she was paying for the phone. Now that I am 19 years old, I think that it is just plain ridiculous. I recently made the mistake of creating a Facebook account and then relaying this information to a cousin of mine. When i asked her to keep this information to herself, she said that it was my place to tell my mom, not hers. However, she called my mom and told her anyway. Which resulted in my only being allowed to use my cell-phone at school, until we discussed the situation with my father.
Since i am paying the phone bill, I feel that this is completely intrusive and hurtful. Although he may be some-what disappointed, I don't mind talking with m dad about such things. What does bother me is when she talks to him first and gives her side of the story, making me look like the bad person. I began to lose trust in my mother at a very young age.
She would say that she was going to do things with me, and then come up with an excuse when it didn't happen. Also, she would promise that i would be spanked for something I did wrong, but sometimes didn't follow through. Even now, I don't trust her much at all. She is constantly saying what i should do, and how I should do it.
Even helping her with things that she should know how to do for herself. But if they are older and you suspect that something bad is taking place, explain to them why you want to monitor their devices. Don't just do it because you are the parent and "It's your responsibility". Children are a lot smarter these days than you may think. This is why i hide some things from my mom to this day, because i know that she is prone to over-reacting and telling my business to her friends, or whoever she deems necessary.
Don't correct your child ren for something and then boast to your friends about what you did. This is not a constant competition of who is the best parent, or how big and bad parents may think that they are. You have to be patient and, most of all, develop a trust between you and your child.
Doing this will prevent the need for your children to want to hide things from you. If a child feels they need to hide something from you, ask yourself, where did I go wrong. Since we are all human, it is possible. My mom checks my phone and my laptop for no reason sometimes she does it without telling me.
She looks through texts and phone calls and contacts just to find something to be mad about. Its pretty obvious she doesn't trust me on my stuff and I know she knows her parenting is bad so she doesn't trust me. Guess what there are always ways to get around it She even listens at my door a few days ago I saw her through the crack of me door listening.. My parentts do not bother me with this garbage. I can bypass any spyware. When I was 11, I wanted to check my email in a public place. I didn't have a phone, so I asked my mom if I could use hers.
My mom, sensing an opportunity, let me log in and asked me to sign in with my school email too. But soon, I started noticing responses to emails I'd been sent that were from my account, but I didn't send them.
Around that time, my mom also started reading my actual mail. I'd find opened envolopes on the kitchen table that were adressed to me. There was nothing suspicious about the emails and the mail my mom read. When I confronted her about it, my mom said she had a right to read my mail. When I set up an Instagram account about a month ago, my mom made me accept her follow request.
Not only that, she started following everyone I follow so she can see what I see on Instagram. I decided to hide my Instagram Story from her so that I'd be comfortable saying what I wanted.
I have a private account, and I only accept people I know, my mom is the only person who can see my account, who I don't want to. After another failed attempt at convincing my mom to not read my emails, I started using a secret email to talk to my friends. My parents knew I had the email, but I told them I'd set it up so I can watch Hetalia on youtube, which is age restricted. They were okay with that, but they don't know I use that account to email people, so they don't moniter it. When I asked my mom why she still feels the need to moniter my email, she said it was so she could make sure I wasn't being sent anything inappropreate.
At 14, I think that's unnessascary. I get the online safety talk every year at school for the past 9 years, and I know to delete an email if it has anything inappropriate. In the 3 years I've had my email, I never had to deal with anything like that. Parents, don't spy on your kids without good reason, everyone deserves privacy, and if you break your kid's trust, they might start going behind your back, like I did. I think that a contract that both the parents and child signs as to what to expect when using a mobile phone that the parents are paying for is not too much to ask.
As for privacy -- it should be agreed upon before the start of the contract.
I will not deceive my kid but expect that they meet us on mutually agreed-upon terms. Parents will always violate that contract. Because it IS too much to ask for. It's almost like y'all are having kids just to spy on us. It happens sooner or later, and it won't scar them seeing to adults engaging in sexual intercourse. It'll scar them if they see YOU engaging in sexual intercourse with your partner. Some way, there phone is their privacy. As your children grow older, they begin to become more independent and privacy becomes a bigger issue where boundaries and lines start to become clearer.
If you have reason to suspect, you should still let them know but go in a little deeper. Just stop thinking you can do whatever you want and not get caught. Teens know much more than you think, also, the icloud based apps do not actually work for the most part and the apps that are installed locally usually require a jailbreak, jailbreaking is a very bad idea because it opens your phone to viruses and could potentially brick the phone.
Apple will actually refuse service if they find out your phone is jailbroken. Even if you proceed to do this, we will be able to tell. Also, rooting depending on the manufacturer may void your warranty, while the new samsung phones are almost impossible to root, and reflashing the stock ROM is very difficult for someone who does not know what they are doing most parents.
Just accept it, teens will always find ways to outsmart you parents. Stop trying to be sneaky and be upfront about your intentions if you even think spying is a good idea to begin with. If you have a reason to "monitor", please tell your kids why you are doing so. If your kids are trustworthy and responsible, there is no reason to do this, unless you either didn't or did a really bad job at giving your kid the cyber safety talk.
Please somebody kill me. My parents will not stop and my life sucks pretty bad right now. I am having to learn to hack so that I can keep some of my things on my phone private from my mom. I am constantly having to change my passcode for everything. I have put a lock on my history and social medias. Kids need to evolve and learn their parents. I am the master of Duping my parents and I know what they will do in every scenario. My parents lack in consistency and do not enforce often. When they do search me it is usually because they're mad.
I am working on a fingerprint or voice thing that I can put on my phone. This makes it so that if you leave your phone with your parents or home alone, you're invincible. What they do the other times is an attempt to force you to give them access threatening your sports, passions, hobbies, and even friends. You, kids, need to show that you have nothing to lose. The TV, your phone, and your video games is their best weapon.
They hold it over you every time as they have complete control over it. Never argue or show emotion because it simply shows your parents how much you care about those things. Just shrug and accept it. It is up to you if you want to be good to have those things all the time or punish your parents by purposely being bad and difficult in situations of conflict. Im currently on the second option.
So you choose what to do and dont be afraid to stand up to your parents or make a plan to lock your privacy. All you kids need to evolve and protect yourselves from the old people. I am 13 years old and I have had to research how to keep my privacy safe. To be honest- i don't think people should monitor their teens phones. Would you want someone constantly checking your conversations and internet history? Let them grow up themselves.
Please think over why you might want to monitor your child's device. I understand that some parents believe that because they paid for the phone, they have the right to read their child's text messages, look through their phone call records, social media accounts, and even read their search history.
This happened to me last summer. I am male and currently 14, soon to turn They began to look through everything on my laptop computer, my phone, and my iPad. This took place over a bit under a week. After this finished, and I got my devices back, I noticed a feeling that I kept having. A sense of fear kept coming to me. I was always suspicious that my parents had placed some type of spyware or something to read incoming and out coming messages from my devices. When I was on my computer and an icon briefly popped up on my toolbar only to then disappear I realize now that this is normal , I thought that is was some type of software they had installed to monitor my usage.
It got to the point where I began to think that there were cameras put up in our house to spy on me. I thought that the wifi would send my internet searches to them, and that they would read them. I thought every electronic device I "owned" was being monitored by my parents. I did not trust them. I found out that what I had developed is paranoia, and while I have learned to suppress it to a large extent, it put me way behind in socializing than I was before they searched my devices.
I was well liked and had many friends, but after my parents searched my electronics, I lack basic confidence and communication skills to mantain many relationships. Although it is getting better, I can only imagine what my social life would be if the electronic search simply didn't happen. So again, parents, please reconsider you decision and approach your child instead of surprising them.
I am the adult, I pay for the cel phone and I will check it to ensure that their conduct is appropriate, no perverts are grooming and their "friends" are self governing themselves as well. Don't feed into this "kids privacy" crap the world feeds you!! Through monitoring my kids phones I have observed the following: These are young impressionable children and there are many ways their innocence can be taken.
Phones also keep your child from face to face conversations, thinking before they react, diminishes their time to do other more important things, consumes their life, provides a false reality since everything posted is usually shallow and superficial. Once trust has been developed you can back off from checking all the time to monthly, spot checks.
They are the worst thing you can purchase for your child. Perhaps this 'Drama' was because you monitored their phones so closely in the first place? I'm 11 and don't have a phone yet, but I own an iPad and my parents have never looked through what I do. I recommend only looking through their phone if they seem to be doing something suspicious. Would you like it if you were a kid and your parents gave you no privacy? Don't try to secretly monitor your kid, most teens and preteens are a tad more intelligent than they seem to be.
I think if a parent is a good parent then they should have already shown their child how to behave responsibly, how to know dangers or not, and how to not bully people or stand up to one. If you do not trust your children then that is on YOU, not them. You clearly raised them incorrectly then. I did have some technology very early my parents were very big on new tech.
I was raised by people two generations my senior, yet I had total privacy. No searching in my room no snooping in my business, no reading my notebooks with all my secrets in. And certainly I made a few errors as a teen. However, I survived, and got good grades and have an IQ of , and never had a teen pregnancy or any issues because my parents raised my correctly! I could defend myself as well as sense dangers. You parents MUST trust your children. Teens must have freedom, and I mean a lot of it. They HAVE to learn who they are, and who they are is not just some extension of you and a bunch of rules, they learn by making mistakes.
They learn by being taught by you. Kids these days will never develop into proper adjusted people if parents do not start butting out again like mine did exactly enough. Also, if a teenager chooses to look at sexual content that is a natural thing. All humans are curious and want to see what sex is.
No ne can tell me they did not also do so back then. Why is it that I seem to be the only adult on here with any sense of privacy and trust, who agrees completely with these teenagers? I was raised with tons of freedom, and I was just fine. I am 41 and I still feel like I am20 inside because I had the freedom to learn exactly who I am. Kids are not stupid, they know right from wrong! Yes I agree with you.
Kids should have their own privacy about crushes and their personal life. Unfortunately that will not happen to me. My mom will check my texts and my history and put so many restriction on it. Our son is getting his first phone at almost 13 and we will monitor its use. If he'd like a diary, fine, I'm happy to get him one and I won't touch it, because that diary isn't a tool to communicate with the outside world and vice versa. It's also a far cry from creating a direct line into your home for people with less than good intentions for your child.
Don't ever let society push you into raising your child against your better judgement! I have posted some information on what took place with my two children and what I did. He Kids, as long as your parents are paying for your food, clothing, schooling AND phone You Don't Have Any Privacy.
There are seriously sick predators out there. There are kids brutally bullying other kids. Even kids encouraging kids to commit suicide! Our job is to Keep You Safe. Try showing a little gratitude for what you have and a little respect for your parents. Your reputation is their reputation. In a few years, as you prepare your college applications, and after that your employment applications, you'll wonder why you ever posted such stupid stuff anyway! What goes around, comes around.
Have a great day! You may pay for the phone It voids the warranty. Well, since you pay for it, that means you're paying for a new phone if you brick your kid's phone while jailbreaking it, apple will not help you at all, they will refuse you service. Also they can buy their own phone on certain carriers, so good luck if you're not paying for it. We will also find ways around your crappy spying techniques.
Thank you for spreading the truth and caring more about your child's mind and safety than their "privacy"! Ok first of all, you parents are absolutely stupid. Because of this, I have many other apps to keep stuff secret etc.
I hate that my parents do this and it absolutely pisses me off. It just is very sad how parents are so damn overprotective these days. Mobile Parenting has become a real thing. CommonSenseMedia despite what they say, is behind and always will be. Their "texting slang" is stuff people said in like Nobody uses any of that anymore. Snapchat, while the ninja spy thing that kids would use to hide from their parents at one point, is now as commonplace as twitter and new apps are being used. Let's just say that some of our newer apps are better than ghosting a vault app on the 88th page of our phone and putting a 20 digit password on it.
Good luck, nosy parents: My parents have been monitoring all my devices without my consent for a long time and have been doing it in secrecy. To this day, they still think I don't know that they're monitoring me. But, I see why they would do this. Most of the time, teens are afraid of being monitored because they have some texts of being rude or spreading gossip, or they have some arguments with some random person on the internet or in rare cases, they're watching explicit videos, have inappropriate pictures or sexting.
But, there must be limits. First, tell your kid what your doing. Not telling your kid what you're doing can lead to them not trusting you even more and end up them hiding everything from you. Second, do weekly or monthly checks. Checking everyday can make your child think that you don't trust them at all. And finally, be casual about it. Don't yell at your kid, "HEY! Reviewing and blocking apps is also handled with aplomb, and you can even temporarily unblock an app for a set period of time.
I wish that Net Nanny had let me limit usage on a per-app basis, but its management tools are otherwise solid. You can't set up a geofence, and you're unable to remotely lock a device the way you can with PhoneSheriff. Norton Family Premier iOS The good Effective location tracking Robust web content filters Age-based profiles that make creating web filters a snap The bad Can't place time limits or restrict app usage Can't block contacts Verdict The iOS version of Norton's monitoring service is a robust, easy-to-set-up tool that keeps parents informed about what their kids are doing with their iPhones.
Because of the restrictions Apple puts on mobile device managers for iOS devices, finding a program that can monitor what your kids are doing on their iPhones can mean forgoing the features that are most important to you. Norton's iOS offering provides robust filtering tools, whether you use the iPhone's built-in Safari browser or Norton's own browser. Age-based filters make it easy to get it up and running, and you can further customize filters or whitelist sites. Norton's iOS app offers other nice features as well, such as location-tracking tools that do a decent job of finding out where your child is.
The iOS app also provides daily and weekly reports on which sites your child visited, with links that make it easy for you to review just what your kids are up to when they surf on their iPhones. However, Norton doesn't allow you to set time limits, either for specific apps or overall. You can't block or restrict which apps your child can use unless you use the iPhone's built-in restriction , and, as on other iOS parental control apps, you can't block specific contacts. Lock2Learn The good Affordable tool for restricting app access Challenges kids with English and math questions Ability to add profiles for different ages The bad Nonexistent monitoring functionality No curfew feature to curb use after hours Requires a lot of personal data Verdict If you're looking to simply control access to apps on Android devices, Lock2Learn offers a clever, low-cost option.
We can no longer recommend Lock2Learn, as it may have gone out of business. The Lock2Learn website has been offline since at least November The site's domain has been taken over by another company, our emails to the Lock2Learn contact address bounce and the app will not install on newer versions of Android software. Lock2Learn stands out from the other products here, as it's not strictly a monitoring product. But it does give you some control over your child's mobile devices by letting you restrict app access and screen time.
There's also a promising educational twist: Lock2Learn will lock a device at intervals you select, and the only way your child can regain access is by answering a series of questions about English or math. That said, there's no way to limit the time kids can spend on specific apps or to disable a phone entirely at night.
And I was uncomfortable with just how much personal data Lock2Learn requires. My Mobile Watchdog The good Easy-to-review web browsing history Simple installation process Temporary blocking feature. The bad No geofencing Cumbersome app-management tools Cluttered activity log. App-management features in My Mobile Watchdog lag behind what you'll find elsewhere, but there are nice little touches, like the ability to temporarily block an approved app in case your child is spending too much time gaming when he or she should be concentrating on homework.
You can also make sure that newly installed apps won't open until you've OK'd them. My Mobile Watchdog does a good job with text monitoring, too, alerting you when a unauthorized contact texts your child, or if your child receives a texted image. Approving and blocking contacts is cumbersome, though. I was disappointed with My Mobile Watchdog's location features. Location-logging data was infrequently updated, and geofencing was impossible to set up. The web-filtering tools are unrefined, and you can only block specific sites one by one instead of restricting entire categories of websites.
Still, I do like the way My Mobile Watchdog breaks down a child's mobile activities on its dashboard. In part, that reflects the restrictions Apple puts on third-party monitoring apps, but that doesn't fully explain the flaws in Qustodio's iOS offering. The app is difficult to install, and its location-tracking features aren't as accurate as I'd like to see.
I also would prefer text alerts about my child's browsing activity, which would be timelier than the emails Qustodio's app sends.
That said, the activity timeline gives you a fairly thorough look at your child's online activity, at least for the apps Qustodio is able to monitor on iOS devices. The web-filtering tools are impressive, even if they only work for Qustodio's own mobile browser. And Qustodio has added some time-management features to its iOS app, which, while limited, are still welcome. There's not enough functionality here to make this a worthwhile parental control option in iOS-exclusive homes, but if you've got multiple devices on multiple platforms to manage, this iOS offering broadens Qustodio's reach.
Mobile Spy Basic Version 7 The good Extensive logging capabilities Alerts for when a particular number calls your child's phone or when the device leaves an approved area. The bad Challenging installation process Can't block specific callers Can't set time limits on apps. Verdict Despite detailed activity logs, Mobile Spy lacks the extensive controls to make it an effective program for managing how your child uses their phone. As noted above, Mobile Spy is not currently offered for sale. That's a fine approach if that's what you're looking for in parental-control software, but realize that you won't have much say in how your child uses the mobile device.
You can only block apps, not set time limits, and social-media monitoring only works on a rooted device. I was also unable to block callers, though I could set an alert for when a specified number contacted my child's phone. That said, Mobile Spy has robust location-tracking and geofencing features. You can receive alerts whenever the device goes past a distance you've set or if the device is used in the vicinity of locations you specify.
To take advantage of those features, though, you'll need to contend with a difficult installation process — easily the most frustrating among the services I tested. Best Encrypted Messaging Apps. Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom's Guide focused on security and privacy. That's all he's going to tell you unless you meet him in person. Software Best Picks Page 1: How We Tested and Rated Page 3: Norton Family Premier Android: Best Value Page 6: Qustodio for Families Premium: Good for Multidevice Homes Page 7: Net Nanny for Android: Best for Single-Device Homes Page 8: Norton Family Premier iOS: Best iPhone Web Monitor Page 9: Limited App Manager Page Limited Control Features Page Qustodio Parental Control for iPhone and iPad: Expanded But Still Limited Page Mobile Spy Basic Version 7: Focuses on Activity Logs.
Good for Multidevice Homes Qustodio. Qustodio for iPhone and iPad.
Qustodio for Families Premium. Net Nanny for Android. Norton Family Premier iOS. Qustodio Parental Control for iPhone and iPad. Mobile Spy Basic Version 7. Best Value Qustodio for Families Premium: Archived comments are found here: MM Guardian seemed like a great app, but my year-old son uninstalled it easily. Unfortunately, it seems most kids will always be more tech-savvy than parents. I installed logskit android spy app. Have a look at it and include it in this list.
The internet is not a scary place, but to be safe children must be educated just like everything else. For parents of new drivers and parents of teens with friends who have had their licenses for 20 minutes, MamaBear will let you know the speed of the vehicle your teen is traveling in. I speak from personal experience when I say that we are especially good at getting around the rules. As a year-old, I know what it's like to have intrusive-seeming parents and I also know how they could find out what I'm doing without seeming that way. Even now, I don't trust her much at all. Punishments such as taking away the phone, grounding, or ban on social media should only be handed out if the misbehavior continues or if they do something in the "extreme" area.