Big Mother is watching you

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We’ve written a lot this year about the ways technology is making it easier for parents to spy on their kids. Reading their text messages remotely without them knowing. Finding out and controlling what they’re buying for lunch. What’s next, a homing device imprinted on their hippocampus that tracks where kids are going and what they’re thinking?

Well, almost. Today, Dallas company Websafety will unveil a platform for mobile phones that allows parents to set predefined areas where their child can go, to track their child going to these areas and to be alerted if the child strays from said area. It also disables text messaging when a phone is moving at more than 10 mph (i.e., in a car -- or on that bad kid’s motorcycle).

Oh yeah, and it also notifies parents if their child contacts someone they don’t approve of or types a word or abbreviation that is too sexual or bully-ish. (And you thought those leashes parents put on little kids were restrictive.)

‘We believe that parents are looking for better mechanisms to monitor what is going on with their child,’ said Chris Wylie, president of Websafety.

The software, available on GPS-enabled phones that run on Android, Windows Mobile 5.0 and higher and Symbian operating systems, uses GPS technology to track where the child is at all times. The software costs $9.99 a month, which is a small price to pay for the ability to know where your child is 24/7. How else are you going to find out what he’s getting you for Christmas?

Parents need only to log onto the Web to check where their child is. They don’t even have to do anything to prevent their kid from texting while driving. The phone will automatically shut down if someone tries to text on it while they’re driving. Unless they’re stuck in traffic. Then they can text away (at least until January, when it becomes illegal in California).

When asked if it wasn’t just a little creepy for a parent to monitor a child to such a degree, Wylie responded that the teen will know when the parent checks his location online, so his privacy will be somewhat protected.

‘We didn’t want to have it be too Big Brother,’ he said.

-- Alana Semuels