I think I need to clarify what IMSafer did. A lot of arm chair QBs here talking about how's it's evil or that abuse of children in a sexual way just doesn't happen...that could not be further from the truth.
No offense (well we know where this is going), but anyone saying this has no f*$%ing idea what they are talking about.
What we found in those years with IMSafer and later with the company that purchased our assets was mindblowing in a terrible way.
In the US we weren't allowed to really do anything with the data we found even in the most awful cases. When the patriot act was in affect there were opportunities to turn some of the data over to the gov agencies that deal with exploited children, but it was unclear.
In the UK they were allowed to more freely use what they found to put pedophiles behind bars...which they did on more then one occasion.
In some cases it appeared that children had installed the software as a desperate cry for help against their abusive family members.
In one particular egregious case the offender was involved in group chats where he would try to normalize the behavior to his child by having other sick individuals tell her it was OK. Then, they would setup times for her to be online with them while terrible acts were perpetrated on her.
No one is acting as if this was common. But, it did happen. And we weren't selling the chat, running ads against it or in anyway trying to monetize the 'fear' or grief of our users.
A lot of people here do not have kids and don't understand how hard it is for parent's to talk their kids about all sorts of issues around sex and drugs and rebellion etc.
In many cases IMSafer was their last hope and it was very helpful to a lot of people.
We never started it because we wanted to spy on kids or know people's gossip. We did it because we realized that parents were ill equipped to deal with the new online world.
Porn was a not a concern. To us that was your child viewing something. What we were concerned with was someone coming into your child's world and talking to them without your permission. If the child was having an issue with their parent's these kind of people would pick at that and try to show the child they were on their side to win trust.
Places where parent's thought their kids should be safe just weren't and still are not.
Also, some kids are susceptible to these kind of attacks by predators. In some cases parent's had kids who had been sexually assaulted in real life already and they were very afraid, because of their child's mental makeup now, that they would make easier targets.
We had adults buying plane tickets for kids and working out details to get them to fly across the country to meet under the guise of some camp the kid was going to, etc.
It's real whether you want to deal with it or not. We did our best to balance online privacy while helping people.
I feel like we did a phenomenal job and we didn't sell fear. It was never part of our marketing or selling.
To pile on a little bit to what Erik shared here. There were several use cases that we could not have imagined when we set out on our path.
First, there was a case where a high school girl was equipment manager of her school football team. She was gang raped by some of the players. She was talking about that in chat with her friend, talking about committing suicide, and talking about how she couldn't tell her parents. She was afraid of what they would do to her. To her! Our engine caught much of this, and flagged it for the parents. It worked out in the end. We found out about this after the fact when the parents contacted us to let us know how our software probably saved her life.
Then there was the situation where there was a father who was a community fire chief. His child installed the software on his father's computer because his father was abusing him, and was spending time in really really bad chat rooms. The kid was hoping we were monitoring the alerts. The child eventually reached out to us asking why we hadn't sent the police. It was heart breaking.
Lastly, there was a kid who was buying drugs from a contact online. Is this a sexual predator? No. But a predator nonetheless. Our software flagged it.
There are bad people out there. Some of them are the Chris Hanson predator types. They aren't all sexual predators, but they are still looking to gain access to children without parental permission.
Children and young people react with "this software violates my rights!" As a child, under the age of 18, in the US, has no rights. A parent is supposed to parent. They have no right to privacy.
The software was not meant to record chats. It worked as a sort of a sliding window, and only when there was a flagged issue would a parent get a notification. That notification would include some of the chat around the offending line to give context, but nothing more.
With regard to access to kids - parents can look into a living room and ask "who is that?" Well it's Johnny. He lives down the street. The parents can talk to Johnny's parents. When a child is in an MMO and has a "friend" list a mile long, parents can't really ask "who is Fragg3rKill3r225?" Worse, their kid may not really know who that person is either.
At the core, IMSafer was about helping parents manage the relationships their kids were building online. As a parent, it is your job to know who has access to your kids, and how they are influencing them. Most parental control software is billed as keeping porn of the computers. IMSafer was about keeping the bad guys out of the kids lives.
Children and young people react with "this software violates my rights!" As a child, under the age of 18, in the US, has no rights. A parent is supposed to parent. They have no right to privacy.
It's absolutely false that children in the US have no rights or that parents can legally violate any of their rights arbitrarily. It's closer to the truth that children don't have a legal right to privacy from their parents in their parents' home using their parents' computer and internet connection.
This attitude is problematic though. Instead of encouraging a more open dialog between parents and their kids, parents using spyware creates an adversarial relationship. Under those circumstances, the kids will find ways around it, which you describe elsewhere as "unfortunate". I have no doubt there were situations where your software resulted in very good outcomes, but I'm inclined to suspect that in most cases where parents installed it, there was something broken in the parent/child relationship. Unfortunately "No mutual trust with your teenager? Our robot babysitter will let you know if she's talking about suicide online." probably isn't the world's best advertising slogan.
But it seems that only 2 countries haven't formally approved it - Somalia and the US. (And Somalia doesn't have a government, so I guess they get a pass for the moment.)
Articles 3, 5, 12, 13, 15, 16, etc etc would all be relevant. If you had carried on with the software this could have helped sell the product. Compare
"You are under 18. You have no rights" with
"You are under 18. You have rights. We know what they are, and we feel our product helps you enforce your rights, and carefully balances your rights with your parent's rights."
No offense (well we know where this is going), but anyone saying this has no f*$%ing idea what they are talking about.
What we found in those years with IMSafer and later with the company that purchased our assets was mindblowing in a terrible way.
In the US we weren't allowed to really do anything with the data we found even in the most awful cases. When the patriot act was in affect there were opportunities to turn some of the data over to the gov agencies that deal with exploited children, but it was unclear.
In the UK they were allowed to more freely use what they found to put pedophiles behind bars...which they did on more then one occasion.
In some cases it appeared that children had installed the software as a desperate cry for help against their abusive family members.
In one particular egregious case the offender was involved in group chats where he would try to normalize the behavior to his child by having other sick individuals tell her it was OK. Then, they would setup times for her to be online with them while terrible acts were perpetrated on her.
No one is acting as if this was common. But, it did happen. And we weren't selling the chat, running ads against it or in anyway trying to monetize the 'fear' or grief of our users.
A lot of people here do not have kids and don't understand how hard it is for parent's to talk their kids about all sorts of issues around sex and drugs and rebellion etc.
In many cases IMSafer was their last hope and it was very helpful to a lot of people.
We never started it because we wanted to spy on kids or know people's gossip. We did it because we realized that parents were ill equipped to deal with the new online world.
Porn was a not a concern. To us that was your child viewing something. What we were concerned with was someone coming into your child's world and talking to them without your permission. If the child was having an issue with their parent's these kind of people would pick at that and try to show the child they were on their side to win trust.
Places where parent's thought their kids should be safe just weren't and still are not.
Also, some kids are susceptible to these kind of attacks by predators. In some cases parent's had kids who had been sexually assaulted in real life already and they were very afraid, because of their child's mental makeup now, that they would make easier targets.
We had adults buying plane tickets for kids and working out details to get them to fly across the country to meet under the guise of some camp the kid was going to, etc.
It's real whether you want to deal with it or not. We did our best to balance online privacy while helping people.
I feel like we did a phenomenal job and we didn't sell fear. It was never part of our marketing or selling.