Just recently I’ve been looking for a way to keep tabs on my son. He’s just got his first ever proper smartphone and, although I don’t want to snoop on him too much, I do want to ensure he’s safe.
One app that has pinged my radar is SpyMyPhone. Initially it was location tracking and geofencing that I was looking for, and it ticks all the boxes here – offering alerts and real-time tracking plus location history access. This way, I don’t have to continually check up on his whereabouts – instead I’ll receive an alert when he enters or leaves a pre-determined area, so I can see if he’s got to school or to a friends house.
That’s initially all I wanted, but with the portability of a mobile phone, you can’t always keep an eye on their browsing habits. In addition, you want to protect kids from seeing sensitive images, installing inappopriate apps or receiving messages which could offend and upset. The SpyMyPhone solution, which gives you a full and fluid web control panel making it all easy to navigate and access, also lets you see call logs and text messages. This, especially for a parent, is a good way to see whether your child is being hassled or bullied.
However, texting is now considered to be a bit “old school”, so it’s good to see that the solution also offers WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Skype Chat, Viber, Instagram DMs and much more. It’ll store the exchanged messages and, in some apps, the pictures and videos that have been exchanged too.
Now, although the solution has the word “Spy” in it, I’d rather consider this as a way to protect your child. After all, we can’t always be looking over their should when they’re using modern devices – it’s not the same as it was many years ago, when kids were only using laptops and we could see their activity.
This app also covers and lets you monitor emails, browsing history, media files, calendar events, notes, reminders and voice messages. This means that it’s a great solution for businesses who want to monitor their employees when they’re using work handsets. It can even detect when the SIM card is swapped out.
For screen-time monitoring and control, there’s also the ability to set schedules which will automatically lock the phone at a preset time. Not only that, but you can also monitor all apps and block those you deem unsuitable. All remotely. All easily done.
Now, getting into the online control panel is one thing. Having all this power is great – being able to take a live screenshot, to be able to record the keystrokes and check contacts and activity – all brilliant, but you can’t be sat on a control panel all day. This, then, is why I was so glad to see a great alerting system – it’ll let you know if a specific person is being called (perhaps you would rather that your kids don’t call someone in particular) and you can also set an alert for a specific keyword or a particular location.
How do I know all this? Well, I’ve tried this live demo. It shows all the functionality, including the most recently used apps, the most recent calls, how much battery is remaining, what the latest deleted videos and pictures were, what WiFi access points are connected and much, much more.
This has a mass of features and right now they’ve got a discount on pricing. If you want to spy on an Android phone it’s $29.99 per month for the Premium Edition (which doesn’t have features like the Geofencing etc) or $39.99 per month for the Ultimate Edition, which has all the features. There’s also discounts if you pay for 3 months upfront or a year upfront. The iOS version is $39.99 per month.