The Digital Deception: Unveiling the Risks of 'Kid-Safe' Phones

Thanks um everyone for coming. Um hopefully you're feeling a little bit energized after lunch rather than tired. But if you want to have a nap in here, by all means, go for it. Um just before I get started, um I handed out a few notebooks and there's a few notebooks on some seats there. If you um find one, please make use of them uh throughout the talk as you wish. Um they're a little gift from me to you. So to get started, who am I? I am Katie Colan. I am primarily a parent and wife. I have two young kids. Um and that is the focus for why I am talking about kids safe phones.

Um I'm also an educator partly from my professional days um in cyber security but also we are home educating our two children. Um and so there's a bit of education in there. Um my back professional background is in application security. Um one of the things that apps had has shown to me about the online world is just how interconnected it is. from applications that we can manually um interfere with um through different processes making them do things they're not supposed to do to just how intrinsic the information um on different applications is and how we see ourselves and other people and the world itself. Um I'm also sort of a social media creator. Um I have a social

media presence called CyberStack Mama. Um it's on Tik Tok, Instagram, um Twitter if you want to go and follow. Um it's been a little quiet recently, but I'm hoping um a little bit after today to get a bit more content out there on things that I have come across that would be helpful for parents, um aunts, uncles, anyone with kids in their lives. Um I am of a generation that remembers getting their first phone. Mine was a Nokia 3310 and it had a white cover that was Harry Potter related, which would be no surprise to anybody who knows me. Um, but the important part of this is that I was around 10 or 11 when I got my first

phone. And that phone could call people, text people, and you could play Snake. That was about the height of it. Um, whereas now phones have evolved into mini computers in your pocket. So, keeping that in mind throughout the talk. Um, I would rather be crocheting is one thing that I would rather be doing right now, but we'll move on from that. Um, let's meet cyersc mouse. This little mouse that I crocheted, he is this is going to be my little character for explaining a bit about um the dangers that young people face when they are on their own devices. So, Cybersc Mouse is 40 days old, which is about 10 years in human years. Um, and today they

were gifted their very first phone. So, some statistics for you. One in five three and four year olds in the UK have their own phones, making CyberCech Mouse a little late to the party. On a gaming forum, an unknown player sends CyberCech Mouse a friend's request. Should they accept? 18% of 8 to 12 year olds have strangers as friends or followers on social media. That's 8 to 12 year olds. So strangers online, something that is very common for adults, never mind children to face when they are on devices. A friend of cyers mouse encourages them to install install Snapchat. Everyone else is using it. So why don't they? Snapchat was originally designed for adults to share adult content with

each other so that it would be disappearing. Do we really think that is appropriate for young kids? Probably not. Um 71% of 8 to 12 12 year olds have apps that are 13 plus like YouTube, WhatsApp. The age rating on those apps doesn't really seem to matter. um particularly for um kids on on these devices. So, a little uh side note on this particular picture. I'm sure you maybe have guessed that I did use AI to create these images. And pointed out by my three-year-old daughter, one of the mouse mice doesn't have an ear. So, thanks AI. Um they replaced [clears throat] it with a um speech bubble. Um so, unsafe apps. So many apps these days are not actually

they're not designed for children in mind and therefore they are not safe for young people to be on. But there is very little in the way of stopping young people from experiencing um things that are not appropriate for them. While using a free game, an ad suddenly pops up promoting a scary movie. 28% of again 8 to 12 year olds have seen or experienced something online that bothered them. This is typically hate or something scary. I was originally going to put in here that it was going to be adult content like pornography or something like that, but actually the statistics show it's scary content that is facing kids more than inappropriate adult material. Um, and so another thing

for kids to face is when they um experience um content that is not for their eyes. So all CyberCech Mouse's friends have met up at a local park. One of their friends makes sure that Cybertech Mouse sees them all together on their snap map, that app that they um installed previously, and all of their friends go dark. Cyber techch mouse then feels excluded because all their friends are somewhere and they won't be able to track them anymore because their snap maps are all off. Cyber bullying is a large factor in how kids experience the um online world. Um 22% of 8 to 12 year olds experience cyber bullying and most of it's related to group chats like WhatsApp. A lot of it's

very um appealing for kids to be exclusionary. That happens in the playground. You have groups of kids who leave other kids out. But online, that then happens behind closed doors. And for them, for a good portion of the time, kids might not say that this has happened until it's happened 100 times and they've finally broken. So what could help cyberc mouse? So, Cyber Sack Mouse needs tools to know how to deal with these problems, who to turn to when these things come up and how to be be safe. There's a um company cyber cyber safe kids IE that have a phenomenal campaign that is same rules apply. Most of the statistics that I mentioned were from

one of their recent reports. Um, you wouldn't send your kid to a swimming pool on their own to go swimming by themselves without first making sure they know how to be safe around water. They learn how to swim or at least at the bare minimum know how to float and know how to not end up in out of their depth if they can't actually swim and who to talk to if they run into into problems. So pointing out the lifeguards that they are the ones that will help them if they are ever in trouble, the tools that we can provide kids is um the important part of raising the next generation online. Um so with that in mind um talk a little

bit about kids safe phones. So has anyone in here heard of kids safe phones like the pin wheel, the gab phone, or the bark phone? Has anyone actually used them? No. Okay, cool. Um, so as far as I'm aware, only the pin wheel phone is available in the UK. Um and so the idea um is to obviously protect um children and um these are products that are basic basically phones that have some kind of um software installed on them. And we're going to go through some of the features. So I'll not be individually picking out different phones. They all have some or all of these um functionalities. And just to give an idea of what the aim

of these phones are initially, we have um GPS pretty common like Snapchat. Their kids are literally sharing their locations with each other. That's pretty common in terms of knowing where your kid is um if they're on at school or if they're um going to after school clubs or things like that. Knowing where they are is something that most parents would want to want to know. My kids currently are upstairs in the child care and even I am like are they definitely still there? Um so I entirely appreciate the GPS side of um having some kind of tech to help you feel a little bit more comfortable when your kids aren't with you. Um we also have then limiting apps.

So a lot of these devices will either block certain applications like particularly like social media or they will have an allowed list of apps that the parent can then either allow or deny um from their side. Um, so a little little side note here. Um, when it comes to blocking things for kids, um, there was a, um, I think eight or nine yearear-old boy who comes to a techie co-op that I run um, for our home education community in Belfast. And his mom was telling me that he has a Mac. They have a limiter on it so that he can only go on it I think it was something like after 3 p.m. And one day midday he

was playing away on his laptop and she was like why are you on your laptop? It's not meant to be available right now. She initially you know blamed the dad going have you changed the settings but no she asked him the her son how he had got onto his laptop. he disabled the clock functionality on the laptop and that that discredited the time limiter because there was no clock. Um so kids will break things. They will find a way to get the things that they want. Their friends are all on something. They will try and find a way to get it if that is what they want. So a little little pause. Has anyone used the notebooks

that I gave out? anyone? Okay. Well, let's just say you had used it. Could I have it, please? How how does that how does that make you feel? If you had written in a notebook that I gave you, you'd written whatever it is that you wanted. I then took it back without without any warning, without any um consideration. For me, I'd be pretty uncomfortable that someone has handed me a gift and they're not expecting it back wanting to see what is in it. Um my point here is quite often we are gifting kids devices and they immediately go mine mine mine. It you gave me a gift for my birthday. It's now mine. But without any

expectations set around the device, that child will immediately have an expectation of privacy and ownership over that piece of technology. So going in, you hand your kid their phone, no conversation, just here, have your phone. They're immediately going to feel defensive if you then say, "Actually, I want to see who you've been messaging. I want to see what you've been doing on that phone." The conversation needs to happen before they're on the tech so that they know that one, you're a safe person to go to when they have problems, but also that a phone is is not a right to have and it's not something that they are depending on age of child may not be ready for it to

be completely their own. Um, and so it's something just to consider whether it's kids safe phones like the the Gabphone, the pin wheel, whatever phone you you choose or device you choose to allow your kids to have. Um, keep in mind that the conversation has to happen of where the risks are, where the dangers are, and who they can go to and who they can turn to when they need help because it will come up. Back to kids phones. One of the things that um these types of phones often do is they will allow the the parent phone to be able to see whether it's all the messages on a kid's phone or just some

of them. It's letting you see what the kid's doing on their on their device. Some of them will also also be analyzing the device for inappropriate content. So whether that is from cyber bullying on or messages, inappropriate um pictures, things like that being shared or seen by the person using the phone. So you may find that you know that your kid is scrolling on um Instagram or in messages and they come across some content that is deemed inappropriate or concerning by one of these companies. The parent will then get a message um saying, "Here's a screenshot of what we have found. You might want to have a chat with your child about it." And my final um

of the feature, my final feature from these phones that I want to talk about is some of these devices will actually just be listening to the surroundings. So, I know we all have something that is listening to us, whether it's our phone that's being we're using Siri and they have a a a tag that alerts them that we're trying to talk to them. But some of these devices are just default set to listen into surroundings. So, imagine your your kid is at a friend's house. Their parents are having a conversation, you know, just on the other side of the room. And it's something that it's not inappropriate. It's not something that your kid shouldn't be listening to, but

it's something that is within their private house that they maybe don't want you as the parent to explicitly turn that that device on and start listening in. So, just to summarize some of those features, we've got GPS tracking, restricting access, remote access to data, and listening in. Does this flag any other tools for any of you? So something that you might use or h someone might use in the line of cyber security anyone >> close spyware. It's it's literally branded spyware for managing your child on a device. you are able to see where they are, able to see what they're doing and you're also giving that data to another company. So I did a a talk on um digital

safety at NIDC last year and a question at the very end has stuck with me since then of what impact heavily monitoring our kids on their devices will do to their future. So, in the name of love, we are saying, "I love you. I need to know exactly what you're doing on your phone, and so I'm going to basically spy on you." So, if you tell your kid, assuming that you tell them they're being monitored, that's one other ethical dilemma. um because you love them. How would you as the parent, aunt, uncle, friend, whoever, how would you react if your adult, that adult, that kid when they're an adult has a partner who tells them,

"I have to monitor your device because I love you." How would you feel then? Because that is broaching onto the case of coercive abusive behavior from a partner. And we're presenting that as I am the parent and I love you and so I must monitor you and so that does lead to the potential that that's unknown behavior as a child and that that's then expected from a loving relationship. Um so kids see phones can give a false sense of security. They alert when something has already happened. So the kids already seen the inappropriate behavior. They've been sent the inappropriate message. they've been cyberbullied and it's after the fact that you're then getting that information. It's not getting ahead of

what can happen. It's getting it's supporting the child after which absolutely they are going to face these things but knowing that you're just observing them is definitely not all we need to be doing. Um, so it does kind of remove the urgency to talk with your child about online safety or what they're up to on their device because you have a a role outside of the tech. You don't need to go and talk to them about what they're doing on their device because you can see it. You can manage it from remotely from your own phone. Um there's also um a moral dilemma for these um devices in that the if you are someone who communicates

with that child, if you don't know that device is being monitored, you don't know that what you're saying to that what you're sending that person um can be seen by someone else and you don't actually necessarily know who else. Um, and I find it hard to explain this because obviously we want to protect kids, but you might want to have a conversation with your niece or nephew about something that maybe it's a surprise party and you don't want the the parent to know or it's just something that maybe is a private conversation that you would have in your house when you're minding your niece or nephew. If you know that it's being monitored by their parent, you may feel less inclined

to have those conversations and therefore that may limit your relationship with that child and it may put a a hindrance on your family relationships. Um so it is something to consider that personally I the child needs to know that if you are monitoring them that they are aware of that. Um and so also finally on that um the that side of things, you're giving a company that is targeting children access to all of your child's information. So do you know what they're doing with it? So we know that companies get hacked every day. How do they store your child's information? Who can say it? How do they keep their data secure? And did your child consent? Can they consent

to their data being sent to a third party? They're already going to be using things like WhatsApp and forums and whatever else. And there is some level of consent to those platforms, but a third party seeing all of that too, and you don't know who who works there, who um what they're doing with that data. Personally, I believe a company that has all that data is going to be a high target for predators. Whether that's as an employee going in and working for that company and then having access to all of that kid, those kids information or hackers from the outside gaining access to the data. Once you put the the name of this is for

children, it becomes a high target and we all know that companies are vulnerable. So, I personally would prefer that my kids data stays in the mix of everybody else's data. They're less of a target when they're amongst a million rather than amongst a hundred. Um, and so that's that's another thing to consider with these phones. The flip side to all of that, because that's very negative, I personally, as you can probably tell, don't really agree with the kids phones, but their social media is phenomenal. If you need to have information about how to protect your kids online, what they're doing, um, information about language that's being used to keep an ear out for new terms for drugs and alcohol or whatever

it is, use those social medias, the social media of these kinds of phones, because they're doing a lot of research into how kids are vulnerable online. So I don't promote the phones but highly promote the social media um from them. So what's next? Um so I've apparently talked very fast. Apologies. Um the biggest thing is make informed decisions about what tech to use. Whether you are the parent or the aunt, uncle, distant friend, whatever. If you're around kids that are using tech, make sure that you have some information to help guide that child or the par other parent on how to give access and when to give access or what it looks like to have access to the internet.

Most people in here will be pretty familiar with online dangers from a company perspective, but consider how that danger relates to an individual child because we're all vulnerable as adults, but yet we're giving kids access to things that were never made with them in mind. um something I had heard recently um from slightly off topic um social media platform um called birds and bees about sexed for kids was drip feeding information is how they then keep themselves safe. So, if you're trying to talk about how to keep yourself safe from um strangers online or from um inappropriate content or misinformation, drip feed the information to the child over a million conversations, a whole 20 years of conversations will eventually

get into their head information about how to keep themselves safe. Um no one conversation is going to keep them safe online. Um, parental controls wherever you can use them do. Um, you have app restrictions, time limits, they exist. They are not always easy to use. They don't really want to make it easy to use. Big companies like Apple and Google, they want to have that traffic. They want to advertise to you. So, they're not going to make it easy. Um, but wherever you can, um, use those printing controls. And where possible, talk with your kids about what their parent you they think their the parental control should look like and come to some arrangement with them because it's

an it is their life, right? They are the ones that are going to get the the the brunt of their friends have something and they're going to be um feeling like they're missing out. It's how to find some middle ground that keeps them as safe as they can in the least risky way, but they can also experience the things that um they want to experience within reason. Um there's a website called Common Sense Media, which is a really um useful tool for um finding out what apps um do. So it also has like um movies and TV shows and things and different ratings. But a good um thing from that is you can get different perspectives of what actually

is in the application. So you can have what the app's rated for, but what parents and kids think the app should be rated for. So what actually happens on that application? Um you can see some people's opinions. Obviously do consider that it's a public website and you can sign up and make your own account. So it's just another um tool for getting varying degrees of what does this application actually do without having to use it yourself. Um educate educate yourself. Talk about what you're doing on your device around the kids in your life. So if you're finding it hard to put your phone down like I do all the time, talk to the kids in your life about that. Like I am am

trying to reduce my screen time personally and it's really hard to do because so much of what we have on our phones is designed to keep us on our phones that kids are going to find that hard too. So actively putting your phone down and saying, "I'm done with my phone for today." Or having a home for your phone in your house. Something like that will help them see physically see how you take breaks from technology. Um, also consider that all screen time is not the same. Watching TV versus creating a website or a game or being actively creative are two very different uses of tech. Um, other things to consider is if you come

across something like a scam, you see a fishing link, you see um, some misinformation, talk about it with your child so that you can say, "Hey, I noticed that this link doesn't go to the website that I'm expecting it to." And just those little bits of information will mean that when they're on their own, something in the back of their mind might say, "Hey, I need to keep an eye on that. that doesn't seem right. Um, and the biggest thing for me is communicate. Communicate with the kids in your life. Be a safe space for your child or your whoever um to talk to them about your successes and failures online. When have you fallen

for a fishing email? When have you accidentally given your password to somebody else? Let them know that you make mistakes too. And when they do come to you, if they if you are a safe person for them, listen to them with curiosity. Don't try and jump in and fix it because they might not need you to fix it. They might just need a listening ear and they might fix it themselves if it if it's something that needs fixing. Remind them how to get help if they want a neutral party. So maybe they don't want to go to a trusted adult in their life. Childline is a really good resource for there is a web interface.

Um so there's a chat chat and a phone number for Childline. Make sure they have access to that resource because some kids will not want to talk to someone who knows them personally just to talk about something that has happened to them. Whether it's as simple as someone left them out of a conversation, someone left them out of an an activity that was planned. they might just need someone to listen to them and let them know that they're not different in a negative way. Um, and finally on that, remind the young people in your life that nothing that happens online is so bad that you can't come back from it. The worst things that I

have heard from people experiencing things like cyber bullying or extortion scams is ending your life over them. And that's not worth it. So please keep reminding the everybody in your life that there is a way forward. There is someone to talk to. There is something that can be done to help you. So thank you. Um some resources that I've mentioned um like NPCC and Childline are there. Um and the slides I believe will go up um if anybody wants to have a look at them after. Thank you. [applause] Are there any questions before I head off? Yeah.

Yeah. So something that is more for the whole family and not targeting a specific age range would be my preference over a app that's specifically aimed at children or young people because of the dynamic of I and you have friends who use that with just their family so that all the adults in their lives use it. So something like that would be preferential over something that is very targeted. Um again you're you weighing up the risks you if you want to have that information that but the better option of that risk is to have their data mixed in with lots of other people's. Um and so it's finding that balance of what works for you and what works for your family. So

that would probably be one that would be um up there as a a middle ground. Any others? Yeah.

Right.

>> Yep.

Y um >> it'll be different for every child. Not even every family. Every child will have a different level of maturity, level of understanding of the different things that they have already experienced on tech or with their friends. Um, something that is pretty key to that would be it's not about when they know about something, it's who tells them. So, in terms of if they come across inappropriate photos or someone sends them an inappropriate photo, do they know that that happens and what to do about it if it does? because as you say it's likely to happen because keeping it from them as a risk isn't protecting them if they're potentially able to receive one. So it's

having that conversation in as as many ways as you can of hey this risk happens at times here's something you can do about it and it it really depends on the child as to how they would receive that information whether it's from the parent or whether it's from a family friend whatever way you can work it in so that it's not a hey you need to be really careful and all of that kind of stuff because kids obviously don't always listen to that. um finding resources that help identify that kind of information in a way that speaks to that child is it it it's really hard to find that balance. Um and it's all about what

you as a family are going are okay with that risk versus um what it is you actually want to to benefit like what's the benefit versus the risk and that's that's a very personal decision. I think that's us. Thank you very much.

>> Yep. So, thank you very much, Kitty. That was second time I've seen that talk and still really good and updated form. Um, so we're back in here at uh 2:30 for James Clapperton, first of our lightning talks talking about uh Dev Sec Ops. Um, if you're looking for something to do in the break, uh, after party, if you want to go to that, pick up a wristband from the Black Duck, uh, stand upstairs. And otherwise, I'll see us back here at 2:30. >> Remember I had to say about the Yeah.