Local Company Creates Texting Monitoring App

A northern Virginia company claims they have the perfect tool to help parents monitor their child's social media postings, but experts suggest parents utilize the app with care.

Tim Woda created the U-Know-Kids software four years ago in Arlington.

"I had a situation in my household, which hopefully most people will never have, and that was that my son was targeted by a child predator," Woda told News4.

Woda's son's predator was caught, but he wanted to make sure other families were kept safe.

Kevin Joyner has been tracking his 14-year-old son's usage for two months.

"I can either look at all of his messages, or I can look at the ones that they've flagged as inappropriate or concerning," Joyner said.

The company has sold about 200,000 premium subscriptions at $10 per month.

But cybersecurity experts warn of third-party monitoring apps, like U-Know-Kids - all those pictures and text messages are kept somewhere, and so is, potentially, your child's location.

"You're essentially giving your phone to a stranger and they're going to be able to pull up every place you've been," Andrew Whitaker with Knowledge Consulting Group said.

Woda said his team can't readily access that data, however, parents can.

"Parents can log into our system at any time and they can delete and it's essentially a nuclear deletion from our system," Woda said. "There's not a backup that's retained, like you see on other social media networks and stuff like that. In our case, it deletes completely out of the system with no record of it ever being in the system."

Local psychiatrist Joshua Weiner told News4 the app makes sense for younger children through seventh grade. He suggests telling children the app is temporary until they demonstrate they are using social media correctly.

When it comes to older teens, Weiner does not recommend the app, especially if your children have made good decisions on their own.

Weiner, as well as the creators of the app, agree you should give your kids a heads up before you install the software.

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