Ignore No More – lock your child's device until they call you back

by juliann • 12 years ago

76 94 12 years ago

ck22• 12 years ago

Very very clever. Grew up before mobile phones existed so it is hard to relate but I guess if a kid has to have a phone, this helps.

Of course nothing stops the kid from lying to their parents which I guess 99% of all kids do.

jacquesm• 12 years ago

Kids will have to explain to their parents how to install it.

Or show them how they removed it.

DoubleMalt• 12 years ago

I like these projects to get more children interested in hacking!

tinco• 12 years ago

Looks great! one thing, you have a nice carousel going on, and maybe I'm a slow reader but I had to make it go back to the last slide three times before I finished reading it. Consider either making the carousel change slower or better yet, make the story vertical.

jpfielding• 12 years ago

if you have this problem with your child, an app is not the solution. you have serious discipline problems.

Broken_Hippo2• 12 years ago

I agree the app isn't a solution to disicpline problems, but the problem of a child not calling back is not really a discipline issue. If you have proper trust and be sure to not over-check the child, this isn't as much of an issue - 'hey, that's my mom, she doesn't usually call, i better answer this' is Very easy when the kid has proof. It is also pretty easy to talk to a child to see why they might not have called back and explain why answering from parents is important It also seems that perhaps parents should try switching to text or whatever the child's preferred method of communication - being flexible might bring better responses. None of this is due to actual discipline problems, just miscommunication or inflexible parenting.

aurelius5• 12 years ago

I don't think you or jpfielding have any real experience raising kids. That's pretty clear from your smug assumption that children are reasonable people who will see the error of their ways if only their parents took the time to explain it to them and pander to whatever way the child wants to go about subverting parental authority.

Let me clue you into reality. When kids pop out, they are uncivilized savages. It takes a good 25 years (on average) before they stop acting like savages and start resembling a reasonable human being. A reasonable person does not require an explanation as to why answering a call from a parent is important, they just answer it because they are reasonable and civilized and know automatically that answering such a call is the right thing to do in the civilized world. A reasonable person also does not require others to pander to their "preferred method of communication", they just pick up the phone and deal with whatever's on the other end.

Teenagers with phones are like hungry cavemen with shotguns. There has to be a way to pull the plug before things get out of hand and dumb stuff happens. This app is part of the solution. If a teenager's trumped up, uncivilized sense of independence is telling them to disrespect their parents and not answer their call, then this app is a useful tool for parents. The correct mode of operation, of course, is to prompt the child to call their parents so the parents can then tell the child that they're coming to pick them up immediately, and to have the phone ready to hand in because they're never going to see it again. The child should also prepare to have their wings clipped.

Unreasonable savagery can not be made civilized through reasonable discussion. That's why economic sanctions, bombs falling from airplanes, and smartphone crippling apps are still effective tools for civilized people.

inglesp• 12 years ago

Shouldn't parenting be about trust?

blueskin_6• 12 years ago

Agreed.

Also, going to be funny when they work out how to uninstall it.

ElliotH3• 12 years ago

Hell, uninstalling is mild. Set the parent phone to a child phone and vice versa, all you need is to guess that password. I wonder if it's the same as their email account?

aurelius5• 12 years ago

I don't trust unreasonable savages. Neither should you.

blueskin_6• 12 years ago

Products like this are great, as they teach children how to get around stupid arbitrary restrictions from a young age, so are less likely to end up as drooling passive consumers poking at a tablet and more likely to become hackers.

walterbell3• 12 years ago

danah boyd has a (free) book on the responses of teens to network parenting, http://www.danah.org/itscomplicated/

Edit: corrected name capitalization

untothebreach3• 12 years ago

Huh, I have never seen this, thanks!

(OT nitpick: her name is actually 'danah boyd' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danah_Boyd#Early_life)

blueskin_6• 12 years ago

Sounds interesting. From the looks of it, it should probably be required to read for anyone in government or becoming a parent. The government here loves pandering to helicopter parents, unfortunately, and wasting huge amounts of taxpayer money on schemes with poor uptake and even worse effectiveness instead of spending less money on education that would actually prove effective with a sensible outcome.

Edit: Free on her site, taking a look now.

Ntrails• 12 years ago

Well, they teach children to google for the answer - which is basically a top life skill at this point. Very few would need to understand the steps, the possible consequences etc so I'm not sure it'll lead to deeper interest or understanding

flux_w42• 12 years ago

Exactly! I learned what a BIOS is and does the first time in my life the moment my parents put a BIOS password on the PC. My first rough workaround was to open the case, remove the CMOS battery and reset a pin. Then I found an easier workaround using the DOS debug tool to trigger a BIOS reset with the IO ports 70 and 71 :)

gwbas1c2• 12 years ago

I used to write my BIOS password on a piece of paper and stick it inside the case. It was only there to prevent casual snooping.

austenallred• 12 years ago

My mom installed a program on our computer when I was younger that only let you use it for a limited amount of time (my limit was usually 30 minutes a day).

We broke through that thing so many times that the company gave us a refund and hired me as a "security contractor" to find ways around it. I found a few that they never figured out how to beat - for example opening a document in Word, typing some stuff, and telling the computer to shut down. Windows would shut down all of the other programs (including the computer time monitoring one) before it shut down Word. Word would come up with it's "save/don't save/cancel" prompt and you could just click "cancel." That was arguably my first foray into "hacking."

UnethicalHacks• 12 years ago

can't help but smile at that story.

gwbas1c2• 12 years ago

It's because companies that sell products like this sell what makes a good sales pitch; they don't understand that things need to actually work as advertised.

pbhjpbhj3• 12 years ago

more likely to become hackers //

Isn't it only the ones who are already likely to become hackers that will circumvent the devices in relatively complex ways? Curtailment of liberties is entirely normal for us as it's a simple aspect of our environment.

walterbell3• 12 years ago

Ransomware improves parent-child communication?

Better: analytics dashboard on latency of response.

Suppression of emotional signals (response latency) is unlikely to improve communication and could lead to second-order consequences "If you treat me like ___, I will behave like ___".

tux3• 12 years ago

Wow that's disgusting.

jzwinck• 12 years ago

Danger: the front page says the child will always be able to call "first responders," but the FAQ reveals that 911 is the only built-in one which the child cannot change. If you live outside the US, 911 may not work, leaving your child unable to dial emergency services.

Adding 112 and 999 to the list would help, but perhaps it's better to just let the kid call whomever they like, and just block "fun" things like texting and other apps. After all, if your kid is out with friends and gets a bit lost, the best person to call will be one of those friends, not the police.

KJasper• 12 years ago

The app is only available in the US appstore for now.

blueskin_6• 12 years ago

Because restricting to GeoIP really works well, right? Oh wait, even many users know how to use a proxy to get Iplayer/Pandora/Netflix from another country - there are even dedicated products for this purpose.

ElliotH3• 12 years ago

Hilariously, there's actually nothing stopping the kid phoning whoever they want. It's controlled by a contact group on the phone, that the child device can edit at will. Step 1 would be to add all friends to that group.

brational• 12 years ago

Ha. I guess I'll put it on my son's phone and tell him that there is a "solution" to fully defeat the app. Make a game out of it. (and I'll tell him Mom won't know)

PS this is how you build trust with your kids.

sbierwagen• 12 years ago

Kids don't use phones to make voice calls, grandpa, for much the same reason they don't use morse code, or smoke signals.

TamDenholm• 12 years ago

Just as an aside, I dont know about other countries but both 911 and 112 work in the UK.

alexcroox• 12 years ago

911 works in the UK, I imagine it's the same for most to cater for those a little too engrossed in US films/TV

rrrx32• 12 years ago

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, YOUNG MAN? WHY WERE YOU IGNORING MY CALLS?

checks GPS log, sees school

does child's homework for him

applies to college for him

goes on job interviews for him

untothebreach3• 12 years ago

you forgot, wipes butt for him

rrrx32• 12 years ago

I thought that was implied :)

waterfowl• 12 years ago

god mom at this rate you're not going to close my Series A for me by 14

pavel_lishin• 12 years ago

goes on job interviews for him

One of my previous employers regaled me with a tale of a parent coming in for an interview with their child. Needless to say, neither got the job.

martiuk• 12 years ago

The perfect app for helicopter parenting, be sure to tell your child you don't trust them as they leave the door.

I'm sure this would be a good product commercially.

The FAQ is a bit jarring, most of it seems to be self praise.

pbhjpbhj3• 12 years ago

The perfect app for helicopter parenting //

Alternatively the perfect app to allow you to let your children have freedom to go out by themselves but still to coerce response when it's needed.

It seems a reasonable quid pro quo to me - I give you this tool which is the pinnacle of consumer communication devices but if I need to talk to you then it's locked until you respond.

Doesn't it mean that children who aren't so trustworthy get the benefit of being allowed out when otherwise they wouldn't?

michaelmior• 12 years ago

I haven't tried it, but isn't this trivial to disable by just booting into safe mode and uninstalling the app?

blueskin_6• 12 years ago

Yep. With root, you can even just disable administrators without allowing them to hijack the attempt.

Actually, letting apps hijack the normal disabling of their administrative functions is a massive vuln, as then any piece of malware can do that to prevent it from being removed.

The funny thing is, Android's safe mode isn't that well publicised (I knew it existed, but would have to look up how to enter it), but if apps like this ever proliferated, it definitely would become well known. See how in the UK, since TPB got censored, there are now literally hundreds of reverse proxies available, and since the government pushed 'opt-out' censorship, there are now dozens of proxies explicitly marketed for defeating them, and more and more sites are switching to use TLS.

fidotron• 12 years ago

In my experience many adults (meaning everyone over 35 at this point) seem to have an irrational attachment to phone calls, when texting or email would suffice or be better. This is just a manifestation of that mentality. If you encourage your kid to text you it's much more likely they'll communicate, largely because it can be done quickly and discreetly.

Given the problems I've heard about with app store purchases from parents in this target market there's zero chance of this actually working, and I'd be surprised if any parent in the target group even believes it would work either.

jasonkester• 12 years ago

Language is weird, and it's always interesting to see the way people spell things that they've only ever heard, often picking completely different words to construct sentences that sound kinda right but don't actually make any sense with the words they've used (there's a guy here who says "properly" whenever he means to say "probably" for instance).

This is the first time I've seen anybody substitute their own made up word (notta') for nada though.

cpwright• 12 years ago

Or you take their phone away when they don't call you back; or ground them. It seems to me that having an enforced version of that won't actually promote responsible behavior as much as more traditional punishments.

steventhedev• 12 years ago

While it's nice to see other applications using the Device Administrator's API, I fail to see what advantage this provides over Google's implementation [1].

[1] https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager

dm2• 12 years ago

If you thought your kids didn't like you before, wait until you install something like this on their phone.

Emotions are weird, if you're sitting around worrying about your child then you need a hobby. If it's really a problem that your child goes somewhere without texting you if you asked them to then don't let them go out next time. If they are in college and don't answer your calls, then leave them alone, find something else to do, send them an email if you need to inform them of something or have something you want to discuss.

Kids go through weird phases, they lash out at parents for different reasons such as being unhappy with themselves or struggling to find purpose. Talk to them in person, ask difficult questions, if they don't have an answer, ask again later or ask different questions.

Be a good roll-model by being calm, rational, humble, and honest. I can picture the mom who had the idea for this app, controlling, slightly crazy, comes off as bitchy.

What if your significant other installed a similar app on your phone? Would piss you off, right?

If you want to restrict the games kids play or the sites they visit on their phones, that's probably for the better, be sure to inform them of the logical reasons such as the fact that game companies exploit human psychology to create addiction and many apps upload private information that could harm them later in life. But locking their phones because they haven't called you back, I just can't see how that'll do anything but harm in the long-run.

"Because I said so.", "Do as I say, not as I do.", "Say it, say I love you."

If you kid doesn't answer their phone they are either in class, busy, have it on mute, in jail, dead, getting high, in a loud car, at a party with friends, having sex, eating somewhere, or they just don't want to talk to you at the moment. If they are in jail, they'll call you, if they're dead, then there is nothing you can do about it, you'll find out soon enough. In every other situation it's not that critical that you hear their voice, send them a text message and find something to do.

It might just boil down to positive verses negative reinforcement.

Just my 2 cents about actually using this product as a parent. Looking at it as an app idea, it's a good idea and looks well executed. I'm sure many parents will purchase it.

unethical_ban• 12 years ago

I find some of your content presumptuous, but overall, I agree that, if you tell a child to check in or be home at a certain time, this app won't solve insubordination. Either lock them in at home, have a real chat about it in person, etc., but this novel locking mechanism isn't going to solve the problem.

Emotions are weird, if you're sitting around worrying about your child then you need a hobby.

If you're worried about your pre-teen while he/she is out roaming the city, you're a good parent. It doesn't mean you have to be freaking out all the time, but my parents cared enough to be concerned if I didn't check in at the deemed intervals.

JoeAltmaier2• 12 years ago

Scoutmaster for 20 years. I told my boys, make your mother happy and we can do anything. If she wants you to call every hour, then call every hour. If she wants you to ride only in my car and no other parents', then we'll do that. If she says take a jumbo bottle of sunscreen, take the bottle and we'll work it out on the trail.

grayclhn• 12 years ago

Of course, a parent could also install an app like this as part of a long process of discussion and negotiation wherein the child repeatedly blows off commitments to check in, blows off even lenient curfews, and struggles to hold up his or her side of the agreement. Maybe you think that's unlikely, and maybe it is. But assuming that all parents should share your attitude and that they'll all experience your success at childraising (I assume you've been the parent of a teenager?) is absurd.

I have no plans to use the app (my oldest daughter is 5), but there are plenty of good reasons a sane parent might want to. As well as plenty of bad reasons.

pbhjpbhj3• 12 years ago

What if your significant other installed a similar app on your phone? Would piss you off, right? //

Attempting to equate spousal (or similar) relationships with parent-child relationships suggests you either have no clue about how adults in such a relationship should relate to one-another or you have no clue about parenting.

I've never said any of those unwanted idiomatic phrases but can still see a place in which I would want a child who relies on me to buy their phone and/or keep them safe to be coerced to respond to a contact request.

In every other situation it's not that critical that you hear their voice //

That doesn't appear to be the point of the app, the point is to coerce a response instead of allowing a person to ignore you but keep using the phone you purchased.

Suppose my child has absconded, ie gone off without telling me where they're going, I'm about to start my shift at work. Do I miss work and try and find them, or do I use this app and "force" them to respond indicating they're safe & well? This app means you can give your kid a smartphone but enforce a usage pattern coterminous with a single-number phone if required. Having a smartphone isn't some sort of inalienable right for a minor.

If you're an adult (eg at university) then buy your own phone and refuse to let people install apps on it; or not, your call.

otterley2• 12 years ago

Suppose my child has absconded, ie gone off without telling me where they're going, I'm about to start my shift at work. Do I miss work and try and find them, or do I use this app and "force" them to respond indicating they're safe & well?

I think what the parent is trying to suggest is that you go to work and not try to find them. If they're old enough not to require constant supervision, they'll come around.

Padding2• 12 years ago

Suppose my child has absconded, ie gone off without telling me where they're going, I'm about to start my shift at work. Do I miss work and try and find them, or do I use this app and "force" them to respond indicating they're safe & well?

This is the equivalent of jerking a dog's leash. It's sad how ready some parents are to deny their children basic human dignity.

If you need to get to work and can't find your child, then whether you go to work or whether you run after your child is a simple matter of setting priorities and following through. Also, if your child takes off without telling you, and you have genuine reason to worry, then there's little reason to think this app will actually be of any help.

The only situation in which this app would "help" would be one where the child is not in any real danger/distress, but you'd still want to reassure yourself of the non-existence of danger (i.e. just calm your nerves), but are too lazy too actually take the steps necessary to do it properly. So lets trample that little human's dignity, for our own selfish desires, since there's only little they can do in return anyways, right?

This is disgusting.

The real tragedy here however is that children don't realize that they're actually the ones with the power in any parent-child relationship, until they've stopped being children and lost the respect for their parents. If they grasped the amount of power they hold, and occasionally jerked their parents around the same way, then these sort of apps most likely wouldn't exist.

galfarragem• 12 years ago

Most of people here had a childhood without cellphones (aka dog leach) and managed very well to survive without permanent parent surveillance. Would my parents, for example, have had less headaches/worries with this app? For sure I wouldn't have liked something like this.

Of course this app can be useful in some exceptional cases but not in standard ones.

exodust• 12 years ago

This app would put whatever rocky relationship I had with my mother on even rockier ground.

The biggest flaw is that the child may not be ignoring the parent, but simply can't call at that time. Perhaps the kid's phone is in their bag or they are in class or something.

To lock the kid's phone based on an assumption of guilt is like punishing the kid for not eating his vegetables before dinner is served.

TazeTSchnitzel• 12 years ago

Not to mention you may be preventing them from getting important help from other sources.

murbard2• 12 years ago

Another way to do it would be to stop offering a free phone plan, or free rent for that matter. What kind of self respect do you have if you're letting a teenager whose lifestyle you're subsidizing treat you like this?

dataminded• 12 years ago

The solution to poor parenting is not an app.

yourad_io• 12 years ago

but it could be PaaS

taternuts• 12 years ago

This is ridiculous - really more like "Teach your child how to jailbreak his device". I know this holds true of me, but I truly can't stand talking on the phone with anyone - I much prefer just a simple text message. My parents/baby-boomers can't stand this, in my experience - for some reason they need the actual call. I think this would be more effective if it unlocked after a text message back.

rational-future• 12 years ago

Hmmm, here's a business idea - install the app on as many phones as you can (remote exploits, free apps in stores) and demand monthly payments to keep them unlocked.

crunchcaptain• 12 years ago

The developer must have hired a great P.R. company because yesterday our local TV news was covering it. Now it's on HN!?!

Read the FAQ and you'll get an idea of the brains (or lack thereof) behind this app: http://ignorenomoreapp.com/faq

"Q: My child ignored my instructions and selected “OK” to the pop-up request to “Disable Device Admin”. How do I restore Ignore No More on their phone?"

"A: I know, I know let me guess the child said, “It was an accident”. First you need to check to see if Ignore No More is still on their phone. If it is then that’s great news. All you have to do is select the device’s Settings icon>Security>Device (or Phone) Administrators where you will then see an empty box beside of Ignore No More Device Admin. Select the empty box; a pop-up will appear, select “Activate”. Ignore No More is now restored on the child’s phone. On the other hand, if the child deleted the app entirely from their phone you will need to download again from the app store."

xg15• 12 years ago

Q: Why won’t the message “Ignore No More!” go away once my child has used the password to unlock their phone?

A: Don’t worry their phone is unlocked. “Ignore No More!” stays visible to your child to help you. The message is a constant reminder to them to answer your calls and texts or else you will lock their phone. If you don’t want to use this feature and want the message to go away, simply open up the parent My Household page and press “Unlock Phone” for that child. Once the child refreshes their screen the message will be gone.

If you market to helicopter parents, that's one thing. If you market to parents who actively enjoy being mean to their children, you should maybe overthink your business model.

lttlrck• 12 years ago

Somewhat surprising there is no Facebook backlash yet... this is a horrible product.

philbarr• 12 years ago

What I find more interesting about this, besides the fact you can block your kids' phones, is the amount of effort put into the creation and marketing of it.

I mean - as far as I can tell [0] this is the only app this person has done, but they've created the website, set up a company, and I even heard about this on the UK BBC news! And at the moment they only have about 100 downloads?!

It would be interesting to hear the story behind this and how much this all cost. Does anyone know more? How did they manage to get such exposure on launch day/week?

[0] reading http://ignorenomoreapp.com/mountaineer-technology-ventures

quaffapint• 12 years ago

They should sell their marketing services rather than this app. To get such quick publicity for something like this, either they have great marketing skills, a bunch of $, or both. Either way, it would be nice to see how they did it.

ufmace• 12 years ago

I'm seeing 5-10k installs on the Play store. Still not much for something that has caught this level of media attention.

diminoten• 12 years ago

I should come out with an app that disables this app, and charge something like $5 for it.

ck22• 12 years ago

I find the negativity about this surprising.

I live in a low income area - you would wish many parents around here cared this much and would helicopter their kids. I fear many of them are doomed from the start.

I think this app is a last resort measure, not like a block on computer use but if the kid is being bad about something to get them to respond.

nknighthb• 12 years ago

Being controlling is not the same thing as caring.

hluska• 12 years ago

It's very rare that an app inspires as much rage in me as this one has. I'm not sure if it is the over the top self praising tone of the FAQ, or the fact that this will be such an amazing tool for abusive parents, or the fact that this is a great way to condition children to obey unconditionally, but seriously, this app makes me irrationally angry.

Some parents are assholes. Some kids have other things going on and don't need a helicopter constantly hovering over top of them. And some media outlets need to learn to be critical of the crap that they flog.

Even if the FAQ included some child abuse/help lines, I'd be significantly less angry. But seriously, this app looks like a red flag for extraordinarily controlling parents. And, there is a bunch of research that indicates extremely controlling behaviour is a sign of abuse. What if, as an entire industry, we decide to always err on the side of protecting kids??

Sorry for the rant. I've edited this several times to tone things down, but this app makes me intensely angry. If there is any justice, the app store will remove this garbage.

StavrosK2• 12 years ago

Hah, the FAQ reads like you're trying to keep pests out of your house.

anotherevan• 12 years ago

I often feel when reading discussions about parenting that posters should be required to list the number and ages of their children. If you're spouting off about how terrible and awful this is, lack of trust, etc, etc, and you haven't been there, your opinion on the matter has a value approaching zero to a stressed out parent.

That said, I don't think this is the greatest of ideas, but I can see cases where it could be a useful tool in parenting. And it is a tool, not a solution that replaces an open dialogue with your kids. Grayclhn said it best[1]: "Of course, a parent could also install an app like this as part of a long process of discussion and negotiation wherein the child repeatedly blows off commitments to check in, blows off even lenient curfews, and struggles to hold up his or her side of the agreement."

Agreed that it is something that is ripe for abuse and helicopter parenting.

(Parent of girl 15, boy 12.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8197401

Ignore No More – lock your child's device until they call you back

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