Product: eGuardian

Claim: Provides “unparalleled protection from online predators”

Price: $29.00 for a lifetime enrollment

Their pitch:

Their Guarantee: “eGuardian is guaranteed to protect your child online — while not limiting his or her Internet options”

How it works: “eGuardian is not site-blocking software or content filter. eGuardian uses its unique process to identify your child’s age group, allowing sites to provide age-appropriate content, build communities with other eGuardian-verified children, and exclude unauthorized contact with adults. By grouping children into age groups — similar to movie ratings — websites and search engines can refine content for your child, and bar adult sites from complete access to minors.”

“When a parent enrolls his or her child, eGuardian verifies the information with the child's school, guaranteeing that the information is accurate and that the person enrolling the child is indeed the parent or legal guardian. Once verified, we are able to provide parents with a unique eGuardian ID for each enrolled child.”

Review:

eGuardian is a fairly good version of an identity authentication product, but it carries the flaws of authentication services – including:

• Authentication is burdensome. It requires schools to take a key role in the authentication process, something schools are not set up to do and it is fraught with privacy issues.

• The authentication process only authenticates that the account was assigned to a child - it does nothing to ensure it is only used by a child. It can be used by anyone the child gives the access information to. Note: Child sexual predators have parents.

• Since eGuardian users can only talk to others who have been through the same onerous authentication process, there will be few other kids to interact with.

• No matter how secure the company stores children’s personal information, no company should be collecting this much information about minors.

My larger concern relates to the flawed problem statement. eGuardian’s stated goal is to block interactions between adults and minors while allowing contact between people in the same age group. Their claim is “Once protected with eGuardian, your child can only communicate with other eGuardian-verified children, or others specifically approved by you, the parent.”

Frankly, this isn’t the problem that needs solving. The risk isn’t in speaking with adults; the risk is in exploitive and abusive conversations – with anyone.

Interactions between adults and minors are usually positive; in fact, minors represent a greater threat to other minors for a wide variety of exploits including incidents of cyberbullying, fraud, scams, and sexual offence.

The bottom line:

eGuardian over-promises “eGuardian effectively blocks predators from reaching your child and makes search engines and social networking sites safe for your child.” and fails to address the real issue of abusive interactions, not interactions with adults.

Linda