[sflamm]

Will someone build a parental control application?

Something like this would be great:

Net Nanny Parental Controls and Internet Filtering from ContentWatch

but tailored to 1) safari 2) youtube 3) itunes

you get the idea...

millions of us are awaiting this app!

[charlieTime]

do you mean a plug in to run locally on the phone. I am using iboss parental control. its hardware on my home network that filters wireless devices. Nothing installed locally on the phone but when my son connects to the home network it fitlers them. Filters any wireless device on the network or wired.

[oldskoolkid13]

im pretty sure the iphone has built in parental controls... what f/w is the fone?

[sflamm]

The iPhone has no real parental controls
It allows you to enable or disable certain features like Safari but that is a binary toggle and not a content control

I am NOT looking to prevent my kid from using the Internet altogether rather I am looking for parental filter controls that are available on all other computers (prevent certain sites and kinds of content)

Safari and google search on the iPhone don't even have content level filters ( child, teen, adult) like they do on the desktop

At home I can accomplish this filterin for all devices use the home network by directing all Internet traffic through a single gateway (which has the filtering software)

However this doesn't solve the problem for mobile devices like the iPhone - even at home the iPhone is capable of 3g or Edge access that does not pass through the gateway (even if it auto switches to the wifi network, your kid can always manually set it to the 3G/Edge network)

Furthermore - most of the time the iPhone is not even at home, which is when you need to be concerned the most. At home you can/should always have a good idea of what is going on at a computer/device etc. But away from home at school, you have no control over friends, activities, etc. (other than trying to teach them to do the right thing)

Like all parents we would like to control content and have some understanding of how the
device is being used

Hence the need for parental controls like Netnanny for the iPhone

Given the expansive SDK, that the device is simple OSX, and that it is jailbroken - this should be accomplishable (think filter layer in front of tcp stack)

I'm sure parents would pay $$$ for this

[chris.deal.85]

I completely agree. This is a must for these types of devices. The internet is an incredible tool, but it is full of things that are just waaaaaaaaaaay too easy to get to. We need a way to restrict certain content and I even need a way to restrict it from myself. Kind of like X3 watch from xxxchurch.com. I heard a quote a couple weeks ago: "it is now easier to look at someone naked than it is to get something out of the fridge. you at least have to get out of your chair to do that."