Be Alerted if Concerning Words or Phrases are Used or a New Friend Appears
ParentShield is the only Mobile Network that provides Parents with real-time alerts of potentially-concerning words or phrases used in their child’s text messages. We can even alert you about every call and message if required. Because ParentShield operates within the Network, and not via an App, this works on ANY mobile phone or smart watch, with or without Internet access. It can also notify you as soon as a phone reconnects to a network after a period of disconnection for maximum peace of mind or if your child strikes up a communication with someone new.
Word Alert Features
- Every ParentShield Account features a powerful SMS word alert feature. You can maintain your own personal dictionary of words, phrases and abbreviations that would give you cause for concern were they to be used in any message to or from your child.
When they are detected, ParentShield sends an SMS to YOUR phone, alerting you of the fact and allowing you to log into your Portal to review the content and conversation. - With the ParentShield App installed on your phone – you can fine-tune notifications from being alerted about every call and text, down to just ones to new correspondents.
The Word Alerts setting allows you to enter Trigger Words which will be matched against every SMS that goes to or from the ParentShield SIM.
The trigger words are aggressively matched so entering “me” will also match the word “meal or mention” so it’s worthwhile taking a little time over getting the list of words together. There is also support for wildcard characters so you can match text-speak or obfuscated messages more easily. There is a test facility in the portal so you can try out matches and see what they would be triggered by.
You can also choose a mobile number from among your home numbers to which the alerts will be sent. The text is sent and we will mark the relevant text message in red in the portal so you can see what triggered the alert.
Texts to or from Home Numbers are immune from matching and if there are multiple alerts in quick succession you will only receive 1 alert text every few minutes rather than one for each match.
Matches will be highlighted in red in the TEXT tab, so you can see which message triggered an alert.
Do you have a list of words to use?
We know from experience that every child has a very unique way of composing text messages! Unfortunately it’s so unique that it’s not really possible to supply lists of trigger words. The variety of languages, dialects and different concerns we see also makes it very difficult. We’d worry that people thought that they had protection that they didn’t.
The best solution in our experience is to log into the Portal from time to time to review your child’s SMS. You’ll spot patterns and vocabulary quite quickly and you can then just enter these into your trigger word list.
Advanced Mode Matching
For those who really want to go to town with matching text-speak or attempts to disguise c0nt3nt by the use of ‘l33t codes’, the Portal allows the use of wildcards and pattern matching character sets.
As well as matching words, ParentShield will also use other available information, and may alert you should the patterns of texting vary wildly from the norm. For instance a high number of texts received , compared to the number sent, might signal a cause for concern and the visibility of messages in the Portal makes ParentShield a powerful safeguarding tool.
Install the ParentShield App on your phone for instant Push Messages
With the ParentShield App installed on your phone you can choose to receive a notification about every SMS or Call, or just ones from New Correspondents.