About Parent Patrol
- Stop late night “under the covers” phone and texting sessions. Let your kids sleep!
- Prevent text message cheating on exams in school.
- Block “bullies” from calling or texting your child’s phone.
- Filter out inappropriate content from the phone’s mobile Web browser.
- Teach kids to balance their minutes on a monthly or even weekly basis.
There are many conflicting positions around the issue of children and mobile phones. At its core are the questions of how to balance your children’s offline responsibilities with their freedom to participate in their social networks, and how to balance your desire as a parent to be “always in touch” with your concerns that your children may be abusing their phone privileges.
Parent Patrol from ACE*COMM helps you find that balance. It is a policy enforcement service that lets you set boundaries on your children’s mobile phone use according to time of day, number of minutes or messages used, numbers called, and services deployed. It can also filter inappropriate content from their phone’s mobile Web browser.
But here’s the best part; even when the phone is in a restricted time period (such as study time or late at night), it will still work for emergency numbers and any other phone numbers that you specify, such as your home number. In other words, your kids can still use the phone for emergencies or to call home, even when they’re not allowed to call and chat with their friends.
What You Don’t Need
With Parent Patrol you don’t need a specially designed handset. Any mobile phone will do, from the latest gizmo-packed “gotta have it” to hand-me-downs from parents or older siblings. You also don’t need a degree in rocket science to set it up – time periods and restrictions are set up through an easy-to-use control panel that you access through the Web.
What You Do Need
All you need to get Parent Patrol is a child with a mobile phone, a service agreement from a participating mobile service provider, and about a medium latté’s worth of coin every month.*
* Cost of the service varies by provider.
Why Parent Patrol is the Best Choice
Flexible
Parent Patrol puts you in charge of your children’s phone use. You can set up time and service restrictions to be as simple or as elaborate as you like (although we suggest keeping it simple – we love keeping things simple!). It is entirely up to you.
For example, you can decide that your older child gets 200 minutes per month and the younger one gets 150 minutes. You can break it down into weekly allotments so they don’t burn them all right away. You can decide that neither child can use their phones during school hours. You can silence the phones (except for emergency numbers, of course) between 8:00 PM and 7:00 AM on school nights for for the younger child, and between 10:00 PM and 7:00 AM for the older one. You can shut off text messaging during study time, but keep voice service open. You can do all of this very quickly through the Web-based control panel. And you can change the settings at any time.
Vigilant
With Parent Patrol you can block the phone numbers of troublesome people from reaching your child’s phone. For example, if the class bully decides to pick on your child this week, you can simply block his number from getting through to your child’s phone with either voice or text.
You can also set up filtering guides for your children’s mobile Web browsers, in the same way you probably do for their home computer. That lets them safely surf the mobile Web without exposing them to its underbelly. You can filter out lascivious material (pictures, text, videos), as well as references to gambling, smoking, drug use, alcohol, or whatever else you feel is inappropriate for their tender eyes.
Cheap!
The cost of the Parent Patrol service varies by service provider, but in every case it is downright inexpensive. On the order of a medium latté per month for each child protected.
But it’s not just the monthly fee that saves you money – you save by regulating your children’s phone use so you don’t have to worry about sticker shock at the end of a particularly talkative month. And remember, even though the minutes and number of text messages can be as high or as low as you want, the phone is always usable for emergency numbers and whatever other numbers you specify.
And let’s not forget that Parent Patrol works on virtually any mobile phone. You don’t have to go out and buy one of those wonky looking bug phones that are designed just for kids (trust us, your kids will hate them). Nor will you have to go to a third-party provider who offers you a choice of only three or four models. You can use whatever phone you want, including hand-me-downs.