Being the parent of an online child is difficult.
IMSafer lets you know when your children may be in dangerous situations online, and shows you how they represent themselves in their online profiles.Frequently Asked Questions
1. What's so great about IMSafer?2. How do I contact IMSafer?
3. Is this useful for just me?
4. What Instant Messenger programs do you support?
5. What operating systems do you support?
6. Should I tell my kids that I installed the IMSafer client software?
7. How do you know what IM accounts to monitor?
8. Is your product free?
9. How many computers can I install this software on?
10. Can you guarantee that your product will protect my child from predators?
11. Why should we trust you to do this?
12. What kinds of things trigger notifications?
13. What is grooming?
14. What's this voting thing all about?
15. Is there any way to game the system of voting?
16. What if a person just changes their screen name once they realize their cover is blown?
17. Aren't there any privacy issues here?
18. Will this work with MySpace?
19. How long do you keep the data?
20. Why can't I read the entire IM chat log?
21. What do I do when the system tells me that another user is already monitoring an account of my child?
22. What happens if I don't get the verification or alert email?
23. How can I uninstall IMSafer?
24. Why do do I need to be sure I am the "Administrator" of the computer I installed the IMSafer program on?
25. How do I add a screen name to the accounts that I am monitoring?
1. What's so great about IMSafer?
The best thing about the product is that it works. The customer experience is second to none. We have gone to great lengths to take a very difficult problem, and present a very elegant solution for our non-technical customers.Our ability to scan instant messenger (IM) conversations in real time, and look for predator issues, sets us apart from other competing products. We don't seek to spy on your children. The spyware products available create a lot of work for parents as they are forced to read through voluminous amounts of data in the hopes of identifying potential issues. The parents we have spoken with would rather know when their kids are getting into trouble, and that's where we come in.
Another great feature of IMSafer is our reputation system. With our reputation system, we have taken an old idea and applied it in a new way. We are allowing parents to share information with other parents in the hopes that it will help protect other children. Any time IMSafer presents you with a notification in a conversation between your child and someone else, you can vote on the perceived threat level of that other person. That way, when that person talks to another child using a computer protected by IMSafer, we can let their parents know right away. Wouldn't you like to know what other parents think of the people talking to your children?
2. How do I contact IMSafer?
For technical support, please e-mail support@imsafer.com.For general feedback or suggestions, you can email us at feedback@imsafer.com.
Press related inquiries can be directed to pr@imsafer.com.
If you are interested in a partnership, you can contact bizdev@imsafer.com.
3. Is this useful for just me?
Not at all. The more parents who use IMSafer, the better. Even if your kid is at a friend's house, if those parents are running IMSafer, you (not them) will get notifications from IM conversations your child has while at their house. The same applies for the other parents. If their kid is at your house, they (not you) will get notifications if their child is on IM and getting into trouble. How great is that? Tell all your friends...downloading is easy.4. What Instant Messenger programs do you support?
We currently support Microsoft (all versions), AOL (both AIM and ICQ), Yahoo! (all versions), MySpace and Meebo. IMSafer supports any IM program that uses these protocols (like Trilian or Adium). We are looking to add support for GTalk, and Skype, as well as some of the peer to peer networks.5. What operating systems do you support?
We support Microsoft Windows Vista and XP and Mac OS X (10.3.9 and 10.4). We do not support Windows 2000 or Windows98.6. Should I tell my kids that I installed the IMSafer client software?
That's a tough question, and one that is going to vary from parent to parent. Our take, as parents, and as young guys who remember what it was like to be teenagers growing up with technology, is that you should probably tell them. The biggest reason is that you should have a foundation of trust with them. Remember, this is not a spying tool, and having your children understand that is important. You will only receive notifications when they are talking about inappropriate topics which have been proven by law enforcement officials to be indicative of predator issues. The kids should feel like they have the freedom to use and discover the wonders of the Internet, just like we did, and not worry that everything is going to be blocked or monitored. When that happens, they will just go to a friend's house or turn off your parental control software. Do a search for Net Nanny hacks to see what we mean.7. How do you know what IM accounts to monitor?
When a user on a computer onto which you have installed the IMSafer client software uses IM, we automatically detect it and start monitoring the account. You don't have to do anything. How nice is that?8. Is your product free?
Yes and no. IMSafer Basic is free and available to any parent who wants it. Basic will support up to one monitored IM account. IMSafer Plus allows for monitoring of an unlimited number of IM accounts, support for MySpace and Meebo, support for MySpace comments, detection of links sent in IM which point to social networking sites and support for Microsoft Windows Vista Parental Controls.9. How many computers can I install this software on?
Realistically, as many as you want. However, if we see a specific user with too many computers attached to their account, we will shutdown the account. Also, if you are monitoring too many IM screen names on a single computer, we will assume that this is a public computer and shut down the account. If this happens to you, you can email us at support@imsafer.com to talk about it.10. Can you guarantee that your product will protect my child from predators?
Of course not. We can make it very hard for the predators to have conversations with your children that you won't know about. We can also make predators think twice about using IM as a way to target children. Our goal is to make it very hard for predators to have access to children. We can't make it impossible.11. Why should we trust you to do this?
Because we are parents and we are nerds. We identified this as a very real problem, and we want to solve it. Other than that, you can IM our CEO any time at imsbwatson on Yahoo! messenger and talk to him about any concerns you have. You'll find he's a pretty nice guy.12. What kinds of things trigger notifications?
We're purposefully mum on this, because we don't want the people who we are trying to prevent from talking to your children to know what we are looking for, but we can tell you the types of categories of content for which we look.Out categories of alerts consist of:
1. Someone looking to make direct contact (i.e. coming to your house)
2. Someone looking to make indirect contact (i.e. calling a phone)
3. Personal information (i.e. phone numbers)
4. Obscene language
5. Specific and sexual references to body parts
6. Specific references to sexual acts
7. Anything related to pedophilia
13. What is grooming?
Grooming is a process of desensitization that predators use on children to prepare and trick them into accepting sexual abuse or other inappropriate behaviors. Grooming also takes the form of comments and questions that are meant to fracture a child's relationship with their parents, and reinforce the relationship the predator is building. Once the predator has gained the child's trust and confidence, they will begin the process of tricking the child into revealing potentially more information than is safe or agreeing to meet in person. Often insidious and difficult to detect, grooming is the primary weapon of predators on IM and social networking sites.14. Whats this voting thing all about?
It's really simple. When we present you with a notification, we show you the snippet of the IM conversation that triggered the alert. You can then vote on your perceived threat level. We ask a very specific question: based on what you are seeing on the screen, do you think other parents would be unhappy with this conversation occurring with their child?Those votes are tallied and we keep them on record so that when a person with a vote record makes contact with your child, we can tell you right away.
It's important to point out, you can only vote on a notification that we flag, and notifications will only be triggered when the IMSafer Protection System detects potential predator issues. The IMSafer Protection System looks for very specific language. You cannot vote unless we see notification. That prevents people from taking advantage of the voting system. Maintaining the integrity of our reputation system is very important to us here at IMSafer.
15. Is there any way to game the system of voting?
Not that we can think of. The reason that Ebay works is that they know when a transaction has occurred. There's a buyer, and a seller. Both of them have the ability to leave feedback. The transaction has to be for something of value, and they can each leave positive or negative feedback. Like Ebay, we know when an information transaction has occurred; or rather when two IM screen names talk to each other. If we flag part of the conversation as potentially bad, we know who was involved and what was said. To further protect our system from being gamed, parents are only allowed to leave what amounts to negative feedback, so people don't have the ability to simply create screen names to chat with themselves and then pump up their scores.16. What if a person just changes their screen name once they realize their cover is blown?
That's a great question, and one that we thought about quite a bit when we first started thinking about this problem. Think of it this way: just because a tiger changes its name doesn't mean that it changes its stripes. That's a fancy way of saying that these people can change their names all they want, but our service will catch them when they venture into discussion topics that we flag. So we may not flag them right away, but we will flag them.17. Aren't there any privacy issues here?
First, check out our privacy policy. Second, the short answer is no. The reason being is that if you are using AIM, MSN or Yahoo for your IM client, you already have the ability to save the conversation to a text file and pretty much do whatever you want with it. We are acting as a way for parents to save those files up to a server and have them analyzed for predator issues. Parents monitoring their children are giving their explicit consent to monitor those conversations. If your child is 18 years old or older, or you intend to use this product to monitor someone who is 18 or older, please don't. You may be breaking state and federal wire tapping laws.18. Will this work with MySpace?
Yes it will.As part of the IMSafer Plus service, IMSafer will detect if your child is using MySpace IM and monitor those conversations for you. IMSafer also scans comments left for and by your child on MySpace profile pages, looking for inappropriate content and alerting you to it. This will work even if your child's profile page is set to private.
19. How long do you keep the data?
We will keep copies of IM conversations on our servers for 30 days. After that, they will be deleted from our servers. However, if during the course of our analysis, our system raises a notification, a copy of the offending text and some snippet of the conversation from before and after the offending text will be saved in our database until you, the customer, decide to delete it.20. Why can't I read the entire IM chat log?
At the end of the day, we want kids to support this product. If you want to spy on them, this is not the right product. If you want to give them room to grow and mature, and be there when they get into trouble, this is the perfect product for you. If enough of our customers demand this functionality, we might add it as a premium option, but for now, we want kids to feel like their parents aren't snooping everything they are doing, and therefore not looking to turn off the software or find ways around it. We've made it very hard for them to do so, but kids are clever.21. What do I do when the system tells me that another user is already monitoring an account of my child?
Email us right away at support@imsafer.com.22. What happens if I don't get the verification or alert email?
This is most likely because the email has not had enough time to get to you (please allow a few minutes) or because your email program or internet service provider has flagged the email as SPAM. Please check your spam folders of your email program. If its neither of those two, please send email from that account to support@imsafer.com requesting account activation.23. How can I uninstall IMSafer?
To keep the IMSafer application challenging for even the most talented youths to delete, we have added some safeguards. In order to uninstall the application, you will have to run the uninstall program from the directory to which you installed the program (most likely "c:\Program Files\IMSafer"). However, you will also need to log on to www.imsafer.com, and edit your account to "allow uninstall".To uninstall on the Mac, download the software again, and when you mount the DMG, you will have the option to uninstall.