Safety vs. Surveillance

Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Traditional parental control applications designed to protect children and teens from online risks do so through parental restrictions and privacy-invasive monitoring. We propose a new approach to adolescent online safety that aims to strike a balance between a teen's privacy and their online safety through active communication and fostering trust between parents and children. We designed and developed an Android "app" called Circle of Trust and conducted a mixed methods user study of 17 parent-child pairs to understand their perceptions about the app. Using a within-subjects experimental design, we found that parents and children significantly preferred our new app design over existing parental control apps in terms of perceived usefulness, ease of use, and behavioral intent to use. By applying a lens of Value Sensitive Design to our interview data, we uncovered that parents and children who valued privacy, trust, freedom, and balance of power preferred our app over traditional apps. However, those who valued transparency and control preferred the status quo. Overall, we found that our app was better suited for teens than for younger children.

Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Parents use mobile monitoring software to observe and restrict their children's activities in order to minimize the risks associated with Internet-enabled mobile devices. As children are stakeholders in such technologies, recent research has called for their inclusion in its design process. To investigate children's perceptions of parental mobile monitoring technologies and explore their interaction preferences, we held two co-design sessions with 12 children ages 7-12. Children first reviewed and redesigned an existing mobile monitoring application. Next, they designed ways children could use monitoring software when they encounter mobile risks (e.g., cyberbullying, inappropriate content). Results showed that children acknowledged safety needs and accepted certain parental controls. They preferred and designed controls that emphasized restriction over monitoring, taught risk coping, promoted parent-child communication, and automated interactions. Our results benefit designers looking to develop parental mobile monitoring technologies in ways that children will both accept and can actively benefit from.

Central and Eastern European e|Dem and e|Gov Days 2020, 2020

Parents nowadays are facing with the fact that their children are using apps like TikTok or Instagram, and have the same question as millions of other dads and moms: how can they protect their beloved from the dark side of internet? Most parents are anxiou nor turn to their parents for advices to protect themselves. There are two options: parental control and educational software. For the first one, there are nearly 140 software for parents. Mostly they offer the same: filtering, banning, spying. These solutions are not just ineffective, because the kids can circumvent the solutions, but usually deepen the issue between the teenagers and their parents. The latter one is too generic, and do not provide hands-on tips. Mongu for Teen is an educational app designed for 9-13-year-old kids and their parents that gives a solution for this problem. In our aims to protect them and as a case study, our experiences how a developer should follow this privacy regulation and how effective can be an eduware to improve the privacy awareness of digital families.

Journal of Adolescent Research, 2019

Parental control applications are designed to help parents monitor their teens and protect them from online risks. Generally, parents are considered the primary stakeholders for these apps; therefore, the apps often emphasize increased parental control through restriction and monitoring. By taking a developmental perspective and a Value Sensitive Design approach, we explore the possibility of designing more youth-centric online safety features. We asked 39 undergraduate students in the United States to create design charrettes of parental control apps that would better represent teens as stakeholders. As emerging adults, students discussed the value tensions between teens and parents and designed features to reduce and balance these tensions. While they emphasized safety, the students also designed to improve parent-teen communication, teen autonomy and privacy, and parental support. Our research contributes to the adolescent online safety literature by presenting design ideas from ...

EasyChair Preprints, 2018

Children today grow up within an environment with many digital technologies. Yet, the use of technology also brings with it the need to protect one’s information and devices, and for parents, the need to protect their children as well. Previous research on children has mainly focused on addressing technology use among older teens, who are already primary users of many of the same applications as adults. Yet, little is known about the use of technology by younger children, and parents’ perspectives regarding the privacy and security implications of that use. Through 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with parents of children aged 5-12, this study seeks to provide a clearer understanding of security and privacy related concerns, behaviors, and practices of parents and their children. We aim to expand the knowledge related to technology use in the family, and opportunities to improve how we protect and educate children in security and privacy.

Annual Computer Security Applications Conference, 2020

For parents of young children and adolescents, the digital age has introduced many new challenges, including excessive screen time, inappropriate online content, cyber predators, and cyberbullying. To address these challenges, many parents rely on numerous parental control solutions on different platforms, including parental control network devices (e.g., WiFi routers) and software applications on mobile devices and laptops. While these parental control solutions may help digital parenting, they may also introduce serious security and privacy risks to children and parents, due to their elevated privileges and having access to a significant amount of privacy-sensitive data. In this paper, we present an experimental framework for systematically evaluating security and privacy issues in parental control software and hardware solutions. Using the developed framework, we provide the first comprehensive study of parental control tools on multiple platforms including network devices, Windows applications, Chrome extensions and Android apps. Our analysis uncovers pervasive security and privacy issues that can lead to leakage of private information, and/or allow an adversary to fully control the parental control solution, and thereby may directly aid cyberbullying and cyber predators. CCS CONCEPTS • Security and privacy → Systems security.

Proceedings of the 17th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications, 2016

One aspect of privacy that has not been well explored is privacy for children. We present the design and evaluation of a machine learning model for predicting whether a mobile app is designed for children, which is an important step in helping to enforce the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). We evaluated our model on 1,728 apps from Google Play and achieved 95% accuracy. We also applied our model on a set of nearly 1 million free apps from Google Play, and identified almost 68,000 apps for kids. We then conducted a privacy analysis of the usage of third-party libraries for each app, which can help us understand some of the app's privacy-related behaviors. We believe this list can serve as a good start point for further fine-grained privacy analysis on mobile apps for children.

Informing Science and IT Education Conference, 2019

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2021

Security and privacy of mobile users could also be a topic of primary importance, given the widespread and growing use of connected smartphones, the great amount of personal data which is able to leak, and thus the shortage of proper controlled environments within the present mobile scenario (for instance, mobile apps and their handling of permissions). During this paper we specialize in a crucial a vicinity of this scenario: usage of mobile by teenagers. We preliminarily report on an ongoing study that for the first time analyzes truth potential risks that children face when using their smartphones. The foremost novelty is to travel beyond the use of questionnaires, which are a typical and handy tool but that introduce bias within the analysis and are limited with regard to the amount of data they're going to collect. Instead we collect data employing a parental control approach: with prior consent of the parents, the smartphones of underage children are controlled and analyzed...

Revista electrónica iberoamericana sobre calidad, eficacia y cambio en educación, 2024

Apps Early childhood Education Data privacy Quality A key focus is assessing children's apps, emphasising informational clarity, safety, and data ethics. The present study employs a structured database for app evaluation, by categorising 30 apps into edutainment, education, instruction, and training based on various criteria, including educational value and user ratings. Moreover, a comparative evaluation between the public ratings and the educator's evaluation was carried out. The findings underscore the challenges in app evaluation due to the proliferation of unregulated and untested applications. It highlights the discrepancies between public app evaluations and those conducted by experienced educators, pointing out the difficulties in obtaining relevant information for accurate app assessment. The study also addresses the aesthetic appeal of apps and how they influence parental choices, often overshadowing concerns about user security and privacy. In conclusion, the study calls for heightened parental awareness in selecting apps for their children. It stresses the importance of considering learning value, educational value, information clarity, security, and ethical data use.