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Parental Control Email/Message Board

Submitted by: AJ
Created: Jul 30, 2006, 12:56 pm

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The Idea

An email/message board system for youngsters (<13 y.o.) that is monitored and controlled by their parents. Parents could set up an email account and/or a message board for their kids and monitor the kids' activity. By default, no email could be sent to the account without the sender being approved by the parent account. Likewise, no one can join/read the message board without the approval of the parent who started it. No advertisements for the kids, whatsoever. Clearly, this is for parents who are worried about their kids' (<13 years) online activity, but who would like them to communicate with friends online. This would allow parents to limit kids' online interaction to a small group of approved friends. Revenue ideas: Ads on the parents' screen, premier features, sponsorship by camps/schools, your thoughts? Note: This is my little brother's idea (10 y.o.) - I'm submitting it for him.

I thought of this idea when I was...

My little brother's mother (Big Brothers Big Sisters) won't let him have an email account because she is afraid of exposure to email scams, spam, inappropriate material, and ads. She wishes he could have some email account, though, but wants to limit it to his friends at school only. Hence, there is at least ONE customer ready to go.

Comments Posted

LogicX Posted: August 4, 2006, 9:44 am

Not a bad idea
Are parents smart enough to understand how to handle/control such things? :-P

I can see parents even paying a small fee per month for an email box for each of their kids --
technically not difficult to setup -- non-whitelisted email addys go to a special box the parents check -- they delete, blacklist, or whitelist people --
whitelisted mail gets forwarded to the kids box

AJ Posted: August 4, 2006, 9:52 am

Hiya LogicX,

You raise a good point.
The parents that I've spoken to about this can do a few things well:
1) they can type in an email address to a list
2) they can read messages
3) they can remember their own username and password
The application won't need to get much more complicated than that.

Also, parents of kids

Merman Posted: August 4, 2006, 11:43 am

I think parents are smart enough...I haven't heard of any programs out there that handle multiple e-mail accounts in the way you described.

GreenMBA Posted: August 8, 2006, 6:21 pm

All the features already exist in current email programs.

Maybe if there were a way to do this with MySpace.com...

Maybe some sort of MySpace.com activity monitor and control? It records what is searched for, visited, typed, messaged, etc and then the parents go online to get the report or it is emailed to them on a set frequency (daily, weekly...).

AJ Posted: August 9, 2006, 8:37 am

Hi Green,

You are absolutely right that all of the features are available right now. What isn't available is the arrangement as I have described it. Sure, people can set up filters and whitelists on their own, but there is no service where 1) this is the default arrangement, 2) where a "parent account" sets these features for a "child account" 3) the parent account can monitor the child accounts' activities and 4) no advertisement are put before the eyes of the child accounts.

As for the myspace: brilliant. A couple of people to whom I've mentioned this idea have said the same thing. I think it is absolutely within the scope of this project.

Aidan Posted: August 10, 2006, 5:06 am

http://www.safe2read.com/

Aidan Posted: August 10, 2006, 5:08 am

http://www.kidmail.net/

I just Googled for "safe email for kids". Got a stack of results.

ajw Posted: September 7, 2006, 11:41 pm

For what it's worth, I've set up a whitelist with parental copies for my kids; I used hMailServer (www.hmailserver.com) with a few scripts. But I don't think most parents want to run their own server. Eventually I'll get it documented and online...

Another site that does safe kids mail is http://www.kidssafeguard.com/ (although I just went there and they're apparently having SQL troubles...)

I think email is only part of the parental-control stuff though; websites, chat, message boards (yeah, myspace...), computer access times ("you can use the computer for 1 hour each day M-F and 2 hours S-S, and only between 10am-9pm" - and possibly even more controls; after homework is done, for example - parent types in a passcode or something)

I did search a few months back - there's a few relatively unknown programs, but none did everything I wanted - especially with email.

(btw, my kids - ages 11 and 13 - know my wife and I get copies of their mail, both sent and received; we discuss computer safety occasionally)

- Al Weiner -

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