Parental SMS Watch

[lancaster09]

I think it would be great to have an app that a parent could monitor the text messages coming in and out of their kids phones. Some say this isn't fair to the kid but this day in age it should be as common as having gps on your kid or having them call to say where they are and what they are doing.

So the app would let you see what messages they were sending and receiving. Or even better the parent would be able to see messages with keywords like "sex". I thought this would be awesome. Of course you would have to find away to ensure the kid didn't uninstall it.

 

[lancaster09]

Trying to push this back to the top. Is it possible?

 

[lexchandra]

it is possible, but kids nowadays are smarter than parents..

 

[cmh0114]

First off, I'm one of those people who disagrees with stuff like this. Do you honestly think that GPS tracking your kids is acceptable? Calling them is fine, but GPS tracking is like stalking your own children. If you can't trust your children, then that's your fault as a parent. When kids become teens, they have the values that you gave them as little children, and you have to live with that. If you can't trust them to be honest with you, then that's your fault as a parent. Apparently, you did something wrong while raising them. Deal with it.


That said, an app like this would be difficult. If you installed the app, the kid could just uninstall it from the Android app menu. You might be able to put a block or password on that somehow, but I'm not sure that's possible. Even if you could, the kid could probably root the phone and uninstall it easily. It would have to be something that the service provider would install as a background process on the phone, I think. Or, you could probably call them up anyways and just ask for a transcript of all of their texts. If you own the account, then they should allow you to do that. If they own the account, then legally, you can't call and ask, nor can you install any spyware-type stuff on their phone to track it for you.

Summary -- Difficult to program, unlikely to succeed, morally wrong. I don't think this idea is going anywhere right now. Thanks for your contribution to the forums, though.

 

[nickf77]

I use SMS Backup just for my own purposes (to look up an old text or something along those lines). It backs up every single conversation (incoming and outgoing messages) to a Gmail account of your choosing, so you could sync it with yours. I've always thought it'd be a great way to spy on someone if I could get it installed on a friend's phone or something, you know . Anyways, he'd never even know it was there. The only time I'm reminded that it's installed is when I use Advanced Task Killer to kill my running apps, because it'll start up in the background every time a text is received or sent. If he doesn't use ATK then you're set.

It never fails either. I basically have a log of every single text message I've sent or received since I've had my phone. I love it.

SMS Backup v1.1.1 Application for Android | Tools

 

[ThinkingDroid]

This exist, and works great!

SMS Text Message Guardian - Android