Microsoft's Family Safety app drills into kids' screen time, browsing habits to help 'facilitate a dialogue'
- Reference: 1589295129
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/12/microsoft_family_safety/
- Source link:
The app was initially [3]teased back in March , but has taken until this week to launch in limited preview for Android and iOS.
The app allows a family's activity to be monitored, showing individual members' screen time as well as the top websites each person visited and what they are searching for. After long weeks in lockdown, we can well imagine what those results will look like.
A weekly summary of activity will, according to Microsoft, "facilitate a dialogue". In our experience, that "dialogue" is usually loud and involves a debate on the pros and cons of Animal Crossing videos on YouTube or something animated on Netflix versus the unbounded joy of home schooling.
Limits may be slapped on certain apps and games, assuming those games are being played on a Windows PC, Xbox or Android phone. Microsoft does struggle a bit with iOS – ask those Apple fondlers looking enviously at the Android antics of Your Phone, for example.
Restrictions can also be placed on what users do with the browser (Edge, of course) with the option to block mature content. "Family Safety," said Microsoft, "provides you with the tools to begin talking about the type of content that is right for your kids."
The same age restrictions can also be placed on downloads from the moribund Microsoft Store and location sharing means the movements of family members can be monitored. What might have seemed a bit creepy back in March has taken on an entirely new meaning as societies get to grips with stay-at-home orders and restrictions on movement.
The apps are in limited preview for the time being and due for launch "in the coming months". Certainly, there is little here that cannot be accomplished by existing tools; a child's activity in Chrome can be controlled relatively easily, and those in the Apple ecosystem (with its far more popular App store) can set limits as well as manually permit of deny download requests.
Microsoft, however, has attempted to cover all bases and provide some unified reporting of everything from a single portal. The ease of use will therefore appeal, even if the requirement to wade neck-deep into the company's ecosystem may not. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/22/ask_microsoft_anything_about_365/
[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/05/11/new-microsoft-family-safety-app-now-available-preview-ios-android/
[3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2020/03/30/introducing-new-microsoft-365-personal-family-subscriptions/
[4] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8552/how-to-accelerate-brilliant-digital-experiences-with-low-code?td=wptl1936
This will actually be useful...
With 3 teenagers doing School From Home, the whole issue of screen time for Windoze has become much more of a problem for the last few weeks - how to block HouseParty (which #1 uses to talk to their mates) until after-school, but allow Zoom (which School use), plus granting extra time to compensate for school-time running over into playtime or when cadets run a late-evening online class.
The latest updates on Win10 have allowed me to get this under control but I have to log-in to my MSFT account to do it, which either means opening up my LT after hours (which I'm not keen on as work inevitably intrudes), or navigating the rotten MSFT UX from my phone.
So an App that brings all of this into one place and that is more responsive and more unified than currently available would be Very nice-to-Have.
(Notwithstanding that, because it's MSFT, they will disappoint, but I live in hope!)
Of course all the telemetry they get on what people do will not be harvested an processed to see what they need to try and invade into next.
That was my instant first thought too.
How much of this ends up in the advertising database ?
Is there something in the EULA that says that you agree to this or did MS forget to insert that paragraph ?
So...
...what Apple have done for a few years now then.
Re: So...
Really, Apple can limit your usage of a Windows PC and Xbox - or any games console. How ?In fact is there an Apple app that controls Mac usage for various members of the family?
a family's activity to be monitored
I thought that users' activity is already monitored by MS? Worse? WORSE?! How can it get any worse?! Monitoring! Monitoring! Monitoring!
Re: a family's activity to be monitored
It's a bottomless pit. No matter how bad it gets, it can still get worse.
I Woke Up When
I thought for a moment that the picture was of Stanley Tweedle from Lexx. I guess I'll go back to sleep...