Parental control application for Android

Abstract

Mobile devices have become an important part of everyone’s lives including youngsters. Many Parents are too busy to sit with their kids, so electronic devices come to the rescue for them. From the first glance it may seem only advantageous, but with advantages come some concerns to consider. The Internet is a unique space where you can find everything. New technologies open the doors of the world wide web for children, which raises concerns about the security of the children when using it. Unsupervised children may be exposed to shocking content, bullying, crime, pornography, dangerous acquaintance, spamming, etc. when surfing the internet freely. Here comes the need to monitor children's activities on the internet when using different devices. Although there are several different tools to do that, there are still things that can be improved. WebGuard is an android application which helps parents monitor children’s activities when using web browsers on android devices. The main capabilities of the app include preventing children from visiting harmful websites for them, sending browsing history to the parents and allowing parents to create a list of custom words and websites, which their kids cannot search for. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate capabilities of the WebGuard app and analyze its strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, the app will be compared to the tools and apps available on the system and on Google Play. Also, privacy issues regarding using the app will also be discussed.