IMSafer
The Foley scandal is fueling new interest in IM prophylaxis, as evidenced by this splashcreen for IMSafer:
And here's the email I received after signing up for the service:
[via email]stowe.boyd@gmail.com,
Thank you for selecting IMSafer to help protect your children. We are very excited about our product and hope that you will share in our enthusiasm. In order to verify and activate your account, please click on the following link:
[dropped the link]
or you can paste it into a web browser. Once your account is verified, you can download the IMSafer software to begin monitoring IM conversations on your computer. If you want to download the software to other computers in your home, just fire up a web browser on each machine, log on to http://www.imsafer.com and select the 'Download' link at the top of the page. Remember, we are only looking for predator issues, so if you want to spy on someone, this is not the software for you.
If you haven't already taken a peek at our parent focused blog, you should check it out at http://parents.imsafer.com. We update it regularly with postings about issues relating to parenting and keeping your kids safe online. We also have a blog which focuses on the more technical issues of being a new web service company at http://nerds.imsafer.com.
We appreciate any feedback you want to give us, and look forward to having you as a customer. You can send you feedback to feedback@imsafer.com. Most importantly, we look forward to helping you keep your children safe online.
Thanks,
Brandon Watson
CEO/Founder IMSafer, Inc.
bwatson@imsafer.com
yahoo IM: imsbwatson
I find it odd that they don't call it spyware, since the idea is to have an app spy on kid's IM conversations. So, even if it's justified by parent's concerns, it's still spyware.
Alec Saunder seems to click with the non-spyware messaging of the product, and the notion of a collective on concerned parents acting like a neighborhood watch on certain individuals:
[Keeping Kids Safe With IMSafer]The IMSafer service also allows parents to leave feedback on people they believe are having inappropriate conversations with their child. This feedback allows IMSafer to be even more proactive in alerting parents about potentially inappropriate online relationships. As more parents get involved, the stronger the service becomes.
What I, as a parent, found most appealing was that IMSafer respects the privacy of kids at the same time. The IM logs are not available to the parent — only suspect exchanges. IMSafer explains the reasons, in their FAQ, as follows:
19. Why can’t I read the entire IM chat log?At the end of the day, we want kids to support this product. If you want to spy on them, this is not the right product. If you want to give them room to grow and mature, and be there when they get into trouble, this is the perfect product for you. If enough of our customers demand this functionality, we might add it as a premium option, but for now, we want kids to feel like their parents aren’t snooping everything they are doing, and therefore not looking to turn off the software or find ways around it. We’ve made it very hard for them to do so, but kids are clever.
I’ve been playing with this for the last few days. It does work, as advertised, and it’s completely unobtrusive when running. And luckily, none of my kids are at risk.
I also wonder about the privacy issues involved. Clearly the information gathered might be of interest to law enforcement in criminal cases in the way that it is intended, but what about its use in unintended ways? Is IMSafer creating unknown and inaccessible logs of IM conversations? It seems so, since they are considering offering access to them as a premium service. How do we know who has access to these? Very creepy, although admittedly not as creepy as sexual predators.
[Pointer from Marjolein Hoekstra]
Yep, it's spyware in its purest form. But I think this product is quite good. I wrote it up this morning: http://news.com.com/2061-12572_3-6122133.html
-Rafe
Posted by: rafe | October 03, 2006 at 11:19 AM