Teens are prone to pushing boundaries and testing to see what they can get away with. This is a normal part of growing up, and not a reflection on your teen’s character or your parenting. However, it’s your job to keep your teen safe and ensure that the boundaries meant to protect them are enforced, and that means keeping an eye on the apps your teen is using and the text messages they’re sending and receiving. But while checking the phone is a good start, you also need to know what you’re looking for. There’s a good chance that your teen is a few steps ahead of you technologically, and they may be using innocent-looking apps to hide activity that they would rather you not see.
Calculator Apps
Is that calculator really just a calculator?
A calculator seems like a perfectly good app for a teen to have on their phone. There are all kinds of free calculator apps out there — some can even save you from having to buy an expensive graphing calculator for your teen’s homework.
However, if you see an app called Calculator%, it is not a study tool. It looks like a calculator and acts like a calculator, but when your teen punches in a certain four digit combination, it becomes something else — a folder full of pictures they don’t want you to see.
KY-Calc is similar to Calculator%, except that it’s not just pictures that it hides. KY-Calc has a secret browser and contact list as well as an image folder. That means that even if your child’s visible browser history and contact list is unremarkable, they could have a whole separate web history that you know nothing about.
Hide It Pro
Could your teen have a whole secret online life that you’re not aware of?
Hide It Pro is disguised as an audio manager, and it appears to control the volume on the phone. However, if you know that this is a disguise, you can press and hold the app to make a lock screen appear, and you’ll be prompted to enter a password. Behind the lock screen, your teen can store text messages, pictures, videos, and even other apps that they don’t want you to see.
Because Hide It Pro allows your teen to hide apps, your teen could be storing potentially dangerous chat applications like Kik Messenger, an app that allows anonymous chatting with total strangers. Kik and apps like it are sometimes used by predators to contact vulnerable teenagers.
Vaulty
Vaulty is an app that not only lets your teen hide pictures and videos, it also alerts them if you try to look in the vault without the correct password. The app contains a secret camera and photo and video editing tools. When someone types in the wrong password, the app takes a picture of that person that your teen will be able to see the next time they open it up.
You can’t protect your teen from predators or bad decisions if they’re successfully hiding their online actions from you. Monitoring your teen’s phone with monitoring software can give you a heads up if your teen downloads one of these hidden apps. To find out how it works, get our free trial today.
