Norton online family expands to keep kids safe on mobile phones

Press release

Published February 26th, 2012 - 08:10 GMT

Al Bawaba

As cybercrime within the UAE becomes more and more mobile, Norton by Symantec has released Norton Safety Minder: Mobile Edition, a free app that allows parents to keep an eye on their kids’ smartphone activities while encouraging an open dialogue. In Norton’s Online Family Report UAE released in December 2011, research found that 12% of children between 8 and 17 in the UAE have experienced a negative mobile-related incident while 54% have experienced a negative online situation.

“Parents know they need to be involved in their kids’ digital lives, and most actually set and discuss house rules for computer use and Internet browsing” said Tamim Taufiq, Head of Consumer Sales MENA for Symantec. “But to make those rules work, you need to extend them to your child’s mobile phone where so much web browsing takes place. With Norton Safety Minder: Mobile Edition, parents can help their kids stick to those rules, regardless of which device they are on.”

The application is used as part of Norton Online Family, the award-winning free online family safety service for PCs and Macs. Through the new app, parents can avail themselves of several tools to teach kids safe and age-appropriate digital habits on their mobile devices.

How does it work?

To get started, parents download the app on their child’s Android phone, login to their Norton Online Family account (or create one from within the application) and can then centrally manage the “House Rules” on that device through the onlinefamily.norton.com website. More than a dozen phones can be easily added to the same account at no charge, with unique settings for each, allowing parents a single point to manage varied settings for kids of different ages.

The application provides web monitoring and blocking features for free, allowing parents to see what sites their kids are visiting and block content they feel is inappropriate. Applied through their Norton Online Family account, parents can use the same set of web filtering settings for the child’s PC and apply them to the child’s Android phone. The service tracks up to seven days of content for free.

Pricing and Availability

Norton Safety Minder: Mobile Edition is available for free in the Android Market at market.android.com, and can be downloaded in English, Japanese, German and Polish. Android version 2.2 or 2.3 is required on the device.

Parents must have a Norton Online Family account in order to activate the application, which they must first install on their child’s device. A free, basic Norton Online Family account will activate the mobile web-filtering and monitoring within Norton Safety Minder for Android. A paid subscription to Norton Online Family Premier, currently only available in the US, will unlock the application’s additional advanced features, such as SMS text monitoring.

Background Information

Symantec Corp.

Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC), the world's leading cyber security company, allows organizations, governments, and people to secure their most important data wherever it lives.

Our Integrated Cyber Defense (ICD) Platform unifies products, services, and partners, protecting enterprises against sophisticated threats across endpoints, networks, applications, and clouds.

A global community of more than 50 million people rely on Symantec’s Norton and LifeLock products to help protect their digital lives at home and across their devices.