One perspective in the privacy/surveillance debate is that kids actually want to share and talk about what they’ve seen. Phones do make it fairly simple to share something, but that would include sharing it in lots of ways and places. One thing that might be a neat feature is a simple “share with parents” button, that kids can use when they want their parents to see something. Maybe even with a couple of options like “this is cool, you need to see this” and “this is scary/weird/unsettling, what is going on here”. Let the kid get in touch with their parents if there’s something going on. We trust kids to do that when something is up at school, why not trust them to do that with phones as well?
One of the more frustrating things is kids talking about something online but having no clue where it was or how to find it again.
Oh, another thing would be to contextualise the stuff they’re looking at. Wasn’t there a Chrome extension that flagged paid for content? Something like that.
Maybe this is a whole special project and more than /e/ can take on at this time, but it seems like there’s this dystopian view of smartphones right now, that does revolve around some serious issues, but ignores the potential. Talking about the utopian version of devices for kids and just people, talking about what technology can do for people’s self-determination and consensus building is an important part of figuring out what direction to go in.
I have 3 kids and I too really miss parental control on /e/.
It’s impossible nowadays to prevent kids from using cellphone.
And what really annoys me is that all systems (I’ve tested Android, iOS and XBox) are VERY intrusive and makes children think that being spied on is a fair price.
On the other hand, you cannot allow your kids to use phones without boundaries, because they would literally use them 24/7. (Mine would…)
The features I would love to see are:
Downtime per day of week
Number of minutes per day of the week
Disable app installation without parents approval
Ability to ask for extra time on lock screen, grant extra time remotely (via SMS ?)
I agree, at least some basic parental control features are missing - especially the ability to block out-of-the-box the installation of apps and to block the modification of the configuration settings would be highly desirable.
For now, I am using an app for this purpose from the /e/ Apps Store.called Lock App. It is small, easy to use, without ads and without trackers (but not Open Source). With this tool, the installation of apps is only possible when entering a predefined password first (like this, the access to the configuration settings or to a content blocker like Blokada can be blocked too).
Only downside for now is that it does not block the manual installation of apps (apk files).
I recently introduced another feature proposal to /e/ for a very light version of a parental control feature as I believe my initial proposal will take time to be realised. Just take a look here and comment if you like: https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/backlog/-/issues/1161
For the moment, I am switching in 5 minutes with TWRP restore feature, between TWO systems backups,
one environment for the children’s with all critical apps or features (mail, browser, newpipe, settings, stores, bank apps etc…) closed buy a gesture code,
educative games, vlc, photo, paint, are allowed but no internet connection
and another environment all open for me when they are not at home.
It is quite easy because they are still very young…
Dear Friends, Child safety option is important sometimes.
Unfortunately, I had to give a google phone to my 10 years old child /Family Link is installed.
Recently, he got lost during a school trip He called me, crying and could not tel me where he was as he was panicked. I just found him via google location share and brought him back home.
In my family everybody uses e/os/ including tablets except my child just because of this experience.
It would be so great if I could give him an e/os phone.
Wish you all a great day.
Understood.
My daughter is using /e/ and is happy with it.
I just installed “Lock App - Smart App Locker” to make her not using the App store. (you just find it mentioned here in the thread a bit above.
Furthermore we installed an app called “My location” on her device. It shows the users’ current address and coordinates. If needed, she could just send me her current location (i.e. via Signal), but we did not need it (yet).
If you feel better with a Google-like solution, I am sure there are alternatives to the one from Google that you could easily use with /e/ as well and that is not stuffed with ad trackers - just have a look yourself.
Actually, I just found one “ESET Parental Control”, I did not try it but it looks promising. B.t.w. ESET is a well-known and independent Slovak antivirus company.
Hope that helps.
Thank you Rallxx. I tried Family link. It does not work at all. But, the others look good. I will try them all and give feed back here to help other people.
Merry Xmas all.
I have been using Eset Parental Control couple of weeks now, and it is working very well. Its has great settings to control your childs phone activity. But I noticed, when you put the child phone to ultra powersave mode, it disconnects the Eset-app. And child has the power to just delete the app, which is not so good thing.
I also added Adguard family dns to her phone. Next step is to make whole family use /e/os.
I have found this interesting thread, and I was wondering if there is a feature to have different “profiles”, one like administrator with full control on the devices, setting the permissions for the others, and a normal user profile, with limited possibility (no app installation / no change of sensitive parameters …)
In my /e/OS, I can see there is the possibility to have a “personal” and a “work” profile (which I guess the app Shelter uses) but I am not sure that they are doing what I meant … in the past, I tried to add a profile in an Android 7 device, but this did not achieve what I wrote above … and based on what you wrote, I was wondering if that was the fastest way (which is not so convenient for a noob like me ) in the latest versions of /e/ OS …
I have the feature you mention in my notepad with /e/. It should be available also on phones. Work and personal are probably referring to Shelter which is intended to protect the privacy for the very same user.
Search for " multiple users" under settings, then add user and experiment
Thank you for your reply.
I have tried to add a user in my /e/OS device, but it seems that the experience is similar to what I had with the old Android 7 device: it is possible to add another user, but that will have its own space, and they can customize it, as well as update apps and adjust device settings. Which is not what I wanted … perhaps there are other options with the more recent versions of /e/OS …
Pretty interesting @nottolino …
Let me try again then … I saw a warning when creating the new user and I stopped there …
Perhaps it is a matter of /e/OS version … can I ask you which one you have?
thank you very much @nottolino, very kind of you.
Complicated period, I hope I will time to “play” with my device during the weekend, and I will let you know.
I could not resist
I created a new user, and the following is what I understood from the test:
a) it really created a separate space for another user, like it was a new clean installation of /e/OS
b) it was possible to adjust all the settings / aspect / apps
c) I could switch Wifi on (no need to provide the password = network recognized by the device …), browse the web, download FDroid and apps from it
So, it was not the administrator / user mode I was looking for, but more a multi-user feature. I do not know if this is linked to the version of /e/ installed …
So, let’s see if there are other feedbacks here … to understand if the matter depends on the /e/OS version or the device type (different behaviour between smartphone and tablet?).
Basically, you have what I am looking for, and I have what you would need life is not fair
I guess that my next step would be to upgrade to a newer version of /e/OS (one day … I really need some time for that …), and retry to add a user, to see if it behaves differently. And perhaps try to get a tablet later, if /e/OS will be able to do what I am looking for.
) in the latest versions of /e/ OS …
life is not fair