TrustFabric launches Child Protect

The new service helps protect children from inappropriate content such as adult SMS services. The new service lets parents associate a date of birth with the mobile phone number and email address of their child.

TrustFabric Child Protect lets content providers and sin industry brands (alcohol, tobacco, gambling etc.) to act more responsibly and exclude children from adult content and direct marketing.

By using the Child Protect service, content providers can find out if a mobile phone number or email address belongs to a child before access is granted to certain content.

Social networks, websites and instant messaging services can use the new service to make sure that no children under 13 years are allowed to sign up and ensure that underage users don’t provide the wrong date of birth when they join.

“I encourage all parents to start using the Child Protect service,” says Pieter Streicher, MD of BulkSMS.com and founder of Parentscorner.org.za.

“The service can have a big positive impact. I believe most local wireless application service providers will choose to act ethically if they have an efficient way to exclude minors from adult services.” says Streicher.

Over the last two months TrustFabric has worked to design and implement the Child Protect service to ensure that content providers are able to more accurately and effectively provide different user experiences for adults and children and comply with legal requirements to protect minors.

TrustFabric Child Protect is a free service. “It takes less than three minutes for a parent to add their child’s mobile phone number and associate a date of birth. A verification code will be sent to the child’s mobile phone via SMS. The parent’s mobile phone number is also verified, so parents will need to have both their phone and their child’s phone handy,” says Joe Botha, CEO of TrustFabric.

Once a Child Protect record is created it can only be removed if both the parent and child’s phone again confirms a verification code and the parent will receive an email if this happens.

“Adult entertainment, gambling, alcohol and tobacco brands can all benefit from using TrustFabric Child Protect. We are in the process of talking to a number of businesses about implementing the service,” says Botha.

“A number of parents have expressed concern about the type of adult SMS services often advertised late at night on television. We’d like to see the mobile phone networks take a more pro-active role in making sure content providers on their networks are not reaching the wrong audiences,” says Botha.

“Our goal is to offer parents more control and peace of mind when giving their children mobile phones. We think most parents would like to see more technology designed to protect children,” says Botha. “The success of this service depends on how many people start using it. TrustFabric already has more than 1000 users and 40 businesses signed up. I’d like to encourage users to tell their friends and other parents about this new service,” Botha concludes.