Protect-A-Child delivers solution to problem of cyber-bullying

Added by Pat Williams on December 13, 2012

This year, Protect-a-Child (PAC) has successfully delivered an innovative technological solution to the growing problem of cyber-bullying.

PAC’s cloud-based tool allows parents to monitor their child’s activity across various social media network and alerting them to any potential cyber-bullying risks. Operating via a database of recognised keywords, the system notifies parents of any inappropriate or abusive language as well as any attempt at coded conversations that could indicate cyber-bullying.

“We thought last year we’d seen the pinnacle of cyber bullying and now it seems to be going up and up and up, getting worse,” said Jason Edwards, the founder of Protect-a-Child.

In addition, PAC have also recently included a ‘Community Crowd Protection’ (CCP) feature that prompts all parents to verify the true identity of any new individual their child connects with on social media. Operating as an online ‘Neighbourhood Watch’ scheme, the CCP feature makes these verifications visible to all PAC subscribers, so should another child connect to the individual, parents can rest assured that the verified connection is a legitimate peer.

Edwards says he believes that the launch of the tool and its development throughout 2012 sees a real breakthrough in the fight against cyber-bullying: ‘2012 has seen huge developments in cyber-bullying awareness, but there is still work to be done to create a safe online environment for our children. We believe that through technology, we have created a product that can arm parents with the tools required to protect their children from the agony of cyber-bullying.

We are now looking forward to continuing our efforts to eradicate cyber-bullying in 2013. By working with a number of influential partners and continuing to improve our product, we are confident that we can move closer to achieving this goal.’

For more information, please visit the Protect-a-Child website at www.protectachild.com.au

About Protect-a-Child

Protect-a-Child provides an easy-to-use social media monitoring tool and was created for parents as a way to effectively monitor their children’s online activity while still allowing children their privacy. The Protect-a-Child program automatically tracks your children’s social networking sites, including Facebook, YouTube, MySpace and Twitter, using keywords and tracking for inappropriate content. Protect-a-Child then sends the parent/guardian an email alert when inappropriate words are detected.