The MMGuardian Parental Control and Family Locator applications both provide an accurate location and phone control solution that enables parents to manage their child's smartphone experience.
In addition, you can control the app using text messages, allowing you to supervise your child's phone use right from your own phone!
Today's technological advances, the phones and devices that it brings, offer amazing freedoms and benefits, but also unprecedented concerns for parents. Our products help you address these concerns, by providing parents with a comprehensive solution to help children make the right choices as they grow and learn.
Both applications allow you to:
And much more! Read on for more details...
Time Limits allows you to easily pre-confgiure the times when your child's phone will be locked.
Several time schedules may be defined, during which, the phone will be totally locked down.
The flexibiity of Time Limits allows you to set lock times to cater for multiple scenarios such as differing sleep times during the week versus the weekend, or various periods of time throughout school days to differentiate between class times and free time breaks such as lunch.
Simply enter the start and end times, and select the days of the week required for the specific time schedule. Note that the start time may be after the end time, to lock the phone overnight.
Premium Feature: Please note that this feature now forms part of our Premium offering.
P.S. Time Limits allow you to pre-set times when the phone will be locked. It is still possible to send SMS commands to lock or unlock the phone on demand.
Loacte your child's phone without having to call them to ask where they are, or to check if they are where they should be. You will receive
text messages containing the location and a clicakbale link to show the location on a map.
You may obtain the location of your child's phone at any time using a simple SMS text command message sent from the admin phone, or various schedules may be pre-configured using the Track/Scheduled Locate function.
This function allows you to pre-configure times to receive recurring updates of the location of your child's phone.
Up to four different locate schedules can be configured, and each schedule can include up to four time schedules.
The flexibiity of Scheduled Locate allows you to cater for multiple scenarios such as ensuring that your child made it safely to and from school - allowing for after-school activies on selected days, and other events at weekends.
Creating a Scheduled Locate is easy: simply define the required start and end times, and how often you wish to obtain the location.
Premium Feature: Please note that this feature now forms part of our Premium offering.
Prevent phone use when driving! Numerous studies and reports in the press highlight how dangerous it is to use a phone
for texting (and other things) when driving. This is an even greater issue for young drivers. When enabled, Safe Driving will
lock the phone if it detects the phone is moving above around 10mph.
Texts received by the phone when it is locked will be responded to with a pre-set configurable message.
Note that when the phone is locked, it is still possible for your child to make voice calls to the emergency services. Additionally they may call or send an emergency text message to your phone (the admin phone). Texts will be accompanied by an additinal text message containing the location of your child's phone.
Safe Driving mode is disabled by default, but may be enabled in the MMGuardian application's settings screen. It may also be enabled or disabled at any time using simple SMS text command messages sent from the admin phone.
This function allows you to block selected apps, or to only allow selected apps to be used by your child.
Additionally, you may specify whether the block/allow is forever, or should only apply during certain times.
Allow mode is appropriate for younger children, where you may want your child to only be able to use applications that you have specifically authorized.
Block mode is appropriate for older children, and particularly where you may want to limit the time that the application is used, perhaps to prevent excessive game playing during sleep times. Block mode also has two additional and important uses: Preventing your child from accessing the Android "Settings" application, and preventing them from installing new applications, by blocking the PlayStore (or other application store) app. Note that if you are using "allow" mode, then your child will only have access to Settings and PlayStore if you specifically include those in the allowed apps list.
Premium Feature: Please note that this feature now forms part of our Premium offering.
Text Monitor allows you to specify words that, if contained in SMS texts sent to or from your child's phone, are messages that
you want to know about. If such a message occurs, you'll receive an alert text to your phone (the admin phone) containing the full
context of the message.
Whether you are concerned about sexting, bullying, or use of inappropriate words, just add the relevant words into the sensitive word list and let the MMGuardian application discretely monitor the text messages that your child is exposed to.
Words may also be added or removed from the list at any time using simple SMS text command messages sent from the admin phone.
Premium Feature: Please note that this feature now forms part of our Premium offering.
Prevent your child from being contacted by undesireable people and protect them from bad influences by blocking incoming calls and
texts from selected numbers, or contacts from their phone's address book.
The MMGuardian application allows you to choose either to block specific numbers, or to only allow calls and text from numbers or contacts that you pre-select.
Note: It is currently not possible to block outgoing calls or texts.
Premium Feature: Please note that this feature now forms part of our Premium offering.
One of the very useful functions of the application is to be able to send SMS commands to find the location of your child's phone, or lock and unlock
the phone remotely. You can also send a command to cause the phone to emit a loud alarm siren tone.
When you send an SMS text command from an admin phone to your child's phone, you will receive back an acknowledgemnet text. If the command was to get the location, the message(s) you will recieve will give the location, and provide a link to a map showing the location. See Locate.
Additional items that can be controlled via SMS text commands include adding and deleting words for the Monitor function, and enabling and disabling of Safe Drive mode and Daily Reports.
By default, your phone (the admin phone) will receive a text message around 8.00pm each day containing an overview of the calls and
texts to and from your child's phone, and also the numbers of websites visited (using the Android browser) over the past day.
Sending of a Daily Report is enabled or disabled in the MMGuardian application's settings screen.
The Daily Report mode may also be enabled or disabled at any time using simple SMS text command messages sent from the admin phone.
We'd all like to think that children readily accept the use of technology to help them make the right choices and keep them safe,
and is something they are happy with. For the times when this is a challenge, the Uninstall Protection function can help.
Enabling Uninstall Protection makes it close to impossible to remove the appliction by normal means, without knowledge of the admin password. As an additional measure, consider prohibiting access to the Android Settings app using Application Control to prevent your child resetting the phone's memory.
Additionally, on more recent Android devices (version 4.X.X), Uninstall Protection should also be enabled in order for the MMGuardian anti-tamper measures to be fully effective. These measures are intented to ensure the resumption of normal operation of the MMGuardian application should the phone user attempt to interfere with it using an "app killer" or "task manager" application.
P.S. Check out these Talking Points for ideas on how to handle your child's objections.
The application should be installed onto the phone you wish to locate and protect. You may of course install it on your own phone to try it out, and get to know how it works, before installing it on your child's phone.
To install the application, simply goto the MMGuardian Parental Control application page on the Google Play site, press install to download and install it, then open the app and register with an email address and password. This address does not have to be the one associated with the Google Play Store account used to download the app.
Please note that the "admin" parent's phone number is required to be able to send SMS commands to the app, and is where alerts and reports from the app will be sent.
The MMGuardian application has full functionality for the trial period of 14 days from registration. There is no requirement to enter payment information, such as configuration of Google Wallet in the Google Play Store app on your child's device, to start the trial.
Following the 14 day trial period, you will be prompted to make an in-app upgrade subsrciption or purchase to continue using the Premium Features of the application. At this time, the purchase options include monthly or annual subscriptions at $2.99 and $24.99 respectively. Subscribers will of course benefit from ongoing product enhancements and new Premium functionality added over time.
The above information describes the lastest version of the application, v.1.2.4, some features may not be present in earlier versions.
The features of the specified versions of the Parental Control and Family Locator applications are currently the same.
List of Android permissions used by the MMGuardian application.
Android is a trademark of Google Inc.
