
Whereoscope (YC S10) Gives Parents An Easy Way To Track Where Their Kids Are - jamesg
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/05/yc-funded-whereoscope-gives-parents-an-easy-way-to-track-where-their-kids-are/
======
liedra
I know the founders personally (sorry M&J!) but in my professional capacity as
a technology ethicist I think this is all shades of wrong.

Trust isn't about knowing where your kids are, it's about communication.
Children have rights to privacy as well, and this includes from their parents:
being able to be independent and reason things through yourself ("should I wag
school?"), looking at the consequences of the actions fully on the basis of
other issues than "mum & dad can see where I am" is an important part of
growing up too.

This app seems to me to entirely catering to the overprotective, paranoid
parents who cannot communicate with their children. It's not about whether the
tech is right or effective, it's about whether we should, as a society, be
encouraging this sort of tech and the behaviour that comes with it. And when
it comes to encouraging independence, good communication, and healthy
relationships, this sort of monitoring is not conducive to this.

Sorry guys, I love supporting you but some of your apps are pretty
questionable, ethically speaking :(

~~~
jamesg
Heya liedra,

Well, we're definitely not professional ethicists. What we do do a lot of is
talking to our customers, and the people we've spoken to, generally, haven't
been the paranoid types that you describe. Generally they've been very level-
headed people, and in speaking to them you can hear how much they care about
their kids.

One person we spoke to recently, though very concerned for knowing his kids
locations, I think has much better data on the actual dangers to his children
than most (certainly more than me, and I'd posit more than you). He was a
police detective and loved the application because of the piece of mind that
it gave him. I think I'm a reasonable judge of character, and in my
evaluation, this wasn't a trust issue, it was just an early warning system to
know when his family might be in danger.

I don't know that we're encouraging paranoia. I think that paranoia will be
there no matter what we do. I acknowledge that there's the potential for us to
profit from it, but I guess I think you under-estimate parents, and I can see
why: I did initially as well.

To me, it comes down to this: when we first came up with this idea, I had a
lot of the same reservations you do. But, we did our homework. We speak to
people all the time about this. And my honest opinion is that parents are not
as bad as you think.

~~~
DavidSJ
There's almost no legitimate fear here. Kids are almost never abducted.

Maybe most parents will tell themselves it's just for their kids' safety, but
what do you think will happen when Jane spends the evening at her boyfriend's
house instead of going to her music lesson? Do you think most parents are
going to pretend they don't know? Does it matter?

Jane is now living in a police state.

~~~
fragmede
I'll admit I watch far too much Law and Order, but the first step after
abducting a child? Toss their cell phone. Into the some other kid's backpack,
or another parent's car, or a trash can at the greyhound station.

Throw the police and parents off the scent while little Jane gets hurt. Oh,
she's still at school. Actually, she was abducted _hours_ ago, and the trail
is now complete cold.

------
plinkplonk
So did one of you fake having a kid to post a "review" on the AppStore? A
poster on Tech Crunch says you did.

IIRC you mention elsewhere on this thread that neither of your is a parent but
on TC someone said this. I quote

"

I think these products are great.

For example, Mick Johnson, CEO of
Wheroscope/Stalqer/Zotora/ChildPulse/BindTwo/Gasbag/Knetckr/… was a childless
30-something guy at the start of 2009.

But due to the power of location-based services, he has apparently discovered
that he has not one, but multiple children, one of whom is apparently old
enough to be taking soccer lessons.

From a ‘review’ that Mick posted to the App Store, of his own product:

“I think it’s great that I can give my child more freedom and at the same time
get more peace of mind. I’m not worried about where he goes, but it actually
makes his life easier if he doesn’t have to keep calling me to let me know
he’s gotten home from school or is later to soccer practice. At the same time,
it’s easier for him to know how long until I arrive when I’m driving over to
pick him up.

I would love to be able see more than 1 of my kids on it though – looking
forward to the update. “

Is this guy blowing smoke? Or did you guys fake a "review"?

~~~
KlahanMontri
Someone else further down on this thread posted the same "fake review" thing
with this link:

<http://appcomments.com/user/42248226?country=143441>

Don't know if MickMountainView is the same person as Mick Johnson but he sure
likes their apps.

------
blintson
Growing up with cellphones was bad enough. Kids need their space. Whereoscope
has made the lives of lots of kids slightly worse.

~~~
andreyf
Don't underestimate kids. They've been battling parents for control for
centuries. The average 13 year old will find 10 ways of cheating the system in
the first day of having it. Three categories come to mind:

1\. Stupid way: lie and give your phone to a friend while you go to your
boyfriend's house,

2\. Social engineer: turn it off every other day, telling your parents 'my
phone just keeps crashing since you installed this virus on it. And how do you
know it's not sending my location to hackers?'

3\. And some of them might even be inspired enough to learn some real hacking:
this will encourage a generation of hackers into hackerdom.

Technology might advance quickly, but human relationships stay more or less
the same.

~~~
jamesg
Totally!

I think there's probably always going to be ways that these sorts of systems
will be evaded; it's just the nature of the beast with computer systems.

What we're hoping we'll be able to do though is to build this in such a way
that there's value to the kids as well as the parents. If the choice is
between getting an annoying phone-call everyday to ask where you are and
having this app, I think for all the times when the kid isn't doing something
malicious, they'll prefer to just have the app. Similarly the app lets kids
locate their parents as well -- this can be handy if they're waiting for a
lift for example.

The last line of defence is that we plan to build in features to tell parents
when the app has been disabled by the kid. Saying that the app has crashed is
one thing, but if that results in an angry phone call telling them to start it
up again -- even if it has just crashed -- I think kids will be less inclined
to keep playing that card.

Awesome feedback though. Keep it coming, dudes!

~~~
plinkplonk
"The last line of defence is that we plan to build in features to tell parents
when the app has been disabled by the kid. Saying that the app has crashed is
one thing, but if that results in an angry phone call telling them to start it
up again -- even if it has just crashed -- I think kids will be less inclined
to keep playing that card."

So in other words you do plan to (help parents) invade kids privacy even when
the kids actively don't want their parents to know where they are. The word
"defence" in that sentence is pretty revealing - your frame of perception
seems to be that of a battle between kids trying to get away from your app and
parents who don't want them to.

Your " kid who want to see how far away their mother is when she's coming to
pick them up," scenario doesn't need this feature.

"We, like you, hate the idea of abusing trust and privacy.

However, children who want their parents to know when they're getting home
from soccer practise, or see how far away their mother is when she's coming to
pick them up, is quite a different scenario."

Yeah that's why kids can't turn the app off without letting their parents know
;-).

"We, like you, hate the idea of abusing trust and privacy."

is very believable, given that feature ;-)

I guess it is all right (must be a dumb kid who'd accept such a poison pill
gift ) as long as there is no sugarcoating involved and everyone (including
the kids) knows what they are getting into. The latter (kids knowing what they
are getting into is somewhat dubious).

Somewhat slimy product in my personal opinion, but hey if it makes money I
can't blame you for trying to get some.

Next step: Spouse tracking so you know they aren't having an affair on the
side. ;-)

Next step: Employee tracking so you know how much time they are spending by
the watercooler or the coffeeshop or whether they are _really_ attending the
tech conference your company sponsored , or even if any two employees are
spending time in each other's bedrooms.

As I said it must be a dumb person who'd accept this kind of un-switch-
offable- without-warning-Big-Brother app on his or her phone. No different
from an electronic monitoring device (as mandated by law for people under
house arrest say) as long as you want to use your phone. The only difference
is that it isn't strapped to you.

If you could somehow add a breathalyzer to the IPhone you could broadcast the
alcohol content in your blood to your parents. How about letting your parents
know how long and when you spoke to whom? Maybe add some speech recognition to
catch any "dirty language". All unswitch off able of course!

Surely there's an app for that!

~~~
jamesg
Hey plinkplonk,

We're the first to admit that it's going to take some time to get the balance
right. Fundamentally though, we're pretty committed to the idea of making this
useful for both parents and for children, and hoping that "last defenses"
won't be needed.

As an example here, we built the system intentionally such that children would
know their parents' location in addition to the parents knowing the child's.
That's got a few implications that are pretty important, but for starters it
means that parents aren't asking their children to do something that they're
not willing to do themselves -- that actually raises the bar pretty
significantly, and I think it does drive home to the parents exactly what it
is that they're asking of their kids.

Do we think that parents should know when their kids have disabled the app?
Right now: yes, we do. I'm open to the idea that we might be wrong on that,
but to my mind it's just an extension of the negotiations about trust and so
forth that parents and kids already need to engage in: if you want time when
your parents won't be tracking you, you negotiate to get that time. It's like
the negotiation that happens whenever a child wants to do anything without
parental, or adult supervision. To my mind privacy invasion and responsible
parenting are different things, and I think the straw-man arguments presented
in that direction are a little unfair to parents, though I concede that there
will always be exceptions.

We did actually look at doing this for spouses -- not to detect cheating (a
cheating spouse will be even more motivated to subvert the system than a
child), but to help out with stuff like "are you near the supermarket? Can you
pick up some milk?", but fundamentally people don't seem all that interested
in it. I think employees would be kinda similar: you get fired if you're not
getting your work done, water cooler or no.

~~~
plinkplonk
"if you want time when your parents won't be tracking you, you negotiate to
get that time. It's like the negotiation that happens whenever a child wants
to do anything without parental, or adult supervision."

The above is valid only if kids without your product have to negotiate _right
now_ for every moment out of sight of an adult. I don't think that is true (in
general) anywhere. That would be a terrible childhood (and adolescence). You
are shrinking the time kids _do_ have away from adult monitoring (at least as
far as their location goes) to zero (with the unswitch-off-able version).

Just replace kids with employees. You can "negotiate" with your employer to
not track you when you are off work, (he'll just get a message that you've
switched off). So what's the problem? No adult will accept such a service (and
there are good reasons for it). Why don't they apply to kids (including
teenagers)?

But the problem isn't one of negotiation. The idea of subjecting _anyone_ to
potential 24 hour surveillance is terrible, especially when you dangle some
bling in front of kids too young to realize what exactly they are opting into.
Yes other people (including governments) are doing it but "he's doing it too"
was never a valid defense.

(Imo) Kids shouldn't have to "negotiate" not being monitored every second of
their lives. At least adults have the intellectual sophistication to think
through the consequences of a leash like this and would flee from any such
product like the spouses you interviewed, iow adults, are doing. Of course
they aren't interested. Adults see the potential for misuse easily).

Kids are more likely to be too blinded by the thought of an IPhone to fully
understand what they are giving up. And frankly I think only immature kids
will ever consent to this kind for trackability.

I don't know you guys from Adam and I don't blame you for building this. You
are trying to make money and not building anything illegal (I think). All I
said is _I_ think it is a slimy product (in other words _ethically_ slimy not
legally) and would never buy it for any kids I know.

This might make sense for _very_ young kids or old people suffering from
dementia or Alzheimers or something, but these don't need to be bribed to give
away their privacy with an IPhone they couldn't otherwise afford.

All this needs is for one nasty incident for this to blow up in your faces. I
_am_ (slightly) surprised Apple allows this on their phones (and that YC is
funding this. wtf?!!). As I said, not illegal, but (again imo, feel free to
differ, ymmv etc) a somewhat unethical _product_.

To repeat, I am not condemning you as evil people. I do think you are being
somewhat disingenuous with the "kids can opt in too" argument. Kids are not in
a position of equal power with parents/other authorities for their "opt in" to
have much value as a justification.

All that said this is _your_ business. You (and your investors and customers)
have to think this through. I am just a remote person expressing his opinion
on the ethics of this thing.

~~~
jamesg
Hi again,

I don't think you're condemning us or anything -- I appreciate the honest
feedback. Founders love people who disagree with them (at least a little bit
:)) -- we much prefer to hear what's wrong with our products that we can fix
rather than hearing about what we've gotten right.

I think it's perhaps a little disingenuous to suggest that kids lack the
intellectual sophistication to evaluate the consequences of using our app
whilst simultaneously suggesting that they are fully capable of evaluating all
the dangers in the world that they inhabit: if they don't need the supervision
of parents, then surely they can figure out what deal they're taking? If they
can't make that kind of decision, I'd argue that they probably do have some
growing up to do before their parents could responsibly let them leave their
supervision.

I say that not only as an interesting intellectual puzzle, but also because
we've spoken to kids about this as well as parents. There's definitely an age
where kids really, truly can't evaluate what's going on. I don't disagree.
What we've found though is that mostly parents don't trust those kids with the
kinds of phones they'd need to run this software (even if we did port to
Android et al). Indeed, I don't think we've spoken to anyone giving their kids
a phone of any kind at age, say, 7, and these kids are under basically
constant adult supervision. At the other end of the spectrum, by 16, kids know
exactly what's going on, and they're of an age where they could have the kinds
of phones they'd need for this.

I should point out that these are not numbers I'm pulling out of the air, but
summaries of actual conversations we've had with actual kids.

The question is really whether there's an age in between where there's a
legitimate need for supervision, yet they're responsible enough to be trusted
with a phone, and where the children are wanting to start exploring the world
and gain some freedom -- it's typically going to be the kids pushing to get
more freedom, rather than the parents willingly thrusting those freedoms onto
the child.

Our position is that there is such a transitional period, when a child goes
from basically constant supervision to basically none, and that parents have a
legitimate need to know where their kids are. It will vary for different kids
and different families, but I do think that easing both parents and kids
through that stage with an app like this is a net win for all concerned: if
having this app gives parents the confidence to let their kids go farther
afield, then we're accelerating the development of the child, rather than
stunting it.

As for why YC is funding us, we ask ourselves that every day! :)

~~~
plinkplonk
"I think it's perhaps a little disingenuous to suggest that kids lack the
intellectual sophistication to evaluate the consequences of using our app
whilst simultaneously suggesting that they are fully capable of evaluating all
the dangers in the world that they inhabit: "

Since I never made that suggestion, I don't have to defend it.

Your "kids live in a dangerous world they can be protected from my constant
surveillance" is an argument/frame you added not something I said. You are
taking one part of my argument, adding some bits _you_ thought up and creating
a false dichotomy.

What _I_ said.

(1) Kids don't have as much intellectual sophistication as adults to see
through the wiles of product marketing folks.

(2) Kids are not in a position of equality of power with parents. This is ok
in general and is only an issue with folks like you use the "but kids opt in
too" as an argument. "Consent" is dicey in a situation of unequal power. In
other words I am thinking your "opt in" argument is weak.

Now that is what _I_ said. Where is the disingenuousness again? The rest of it
is your frame. The following is _your_ opinion not mine - (1)Kids live in a
very dangerous world and are at high risk of bad things happening to them
unless they can be monitored constantly. (2) Parents can protect them by
tracking them constantly (and letting some random company store and process
this data)

What I think

(a) Most kids don't live in an an ultra dangerous world, Sure there are
dangerous parts of the world. Most kids do just fine avoiding those.

(b) Parents who are _constantly_ worried about their kids being abducted or
killed or whatever and need to spy on them to reassure themselves and have to
bribe them with phones to get their "consent" to be spied upon are probably
paranoid.

(c) irrespective of the "danger level" of the world, constant surveillance by
parents is not the solution.(This is the same argument governments make when
they try to reduce privacy of their citizens _ "See there are all these
terrorists out there and dangerous things may heppen to you when we are not
looking so we have to snoop on you for your own good. If you aren't doing
anything sinister what is your problem anyway?". Sure it is a good scare
tactic, but hardly a sound argument.

(d) Whether constant surveillance by parents actually reduces any existing
danger is yet to be shown. You are only addressing the paranoia not the
danger.

(e) All of this this has nothing to do with your product reducing the kids
privacy to essentially zero from some non zero value, (sure "just to protect
them" ;-) ).

I am trying to give you feedback honestly (since this is HN. I wouldn't bother
elsewhere) Please don't put words in my mouth.

That said, _now_ I am getting dubious about you guys personally. You are
meeting honest feedback with mis characterization. Not a good sign. I am done
talking to you gentlemen.

Have a great day and Good Luck with your company.

------
palish
Who would give their 8-12 year old an iPhone 3GS / iPhone 4?

Or rather, is that market big enough? Maybe eventually, but this seems almost
premature.

~~~
pg
Who would buy a microcomputer in 1975? In a startup you want to lead the
target.

~~~
paraschopra
But I guess many, many microcomputer startups failed because they were way
ahead of the adoption curve. As a startup, don't you want to maximize your
chances of survival + potential growth? (As opposed to just potential growth).

~~~
pg
What you want to do is make something that people want so much that they'll
use it even early. So e.g. writing a Basic interpreter was the right thing in
1975, because microcomputer users were programmers, and the alternative was
programming in machine language. Whereoscope is roughly the equivalent thing
for this market. Parents _really_ want to know where their kids are, so even
though there may only be a few families that have the right hardware already,
there will be enough users to keep Whereoscope afloat till more do.

------
c1sc0
Who else thought 'cute, typical for Americans' when reading this? Somehow I
have a hard time imagining families around me in Europe using such a service.
The fact that there is a market for these kinds of apps is telling about US
society and its approach to parenting. Really, wtf!? Just let go a little &
let your kids run wild.

Also: how long until these kids start hacking the system: pay off some other
kid to carry the phone as an alibi? Even better: reverse engineer the protocol
& write their own spoofing app. Now THAT would be a good education.

------
whyme
I doubt the company will succeed with a website like that. It looks nice, but
has enough problems.

1\. It doesn't clarify IF your kid requires a smartphone. Anyone not coming
from the the article would wonder if there was 1 phone for the parent and a
wrist-watch or something for the kid. It may seem obvious to many, but the
average person hitting the site would probably not know, then try to use the
feedback tool, which leads to #2.

2\. The feedback tool makes you fill out the form first then after all that
leads you to sign in or create an account -with no way out. What a shitty way
to do it. It's not a social media site, it's a business.

Subtle things like this can make a company flop. If they can't get the basics
down, why would I want to do business with them?

As for the product. I agree with the previous post, like as if my kids are
going to have a smart phone.

Just my 2 cents.

~~~
jamesg
Yep, that's totally fair. The website is in pretty bad shape.

We're following the advice we've been given which is that we should launch as
soon as possible. To that end we've put a lot of work into the app, but the
website largely remains a TODO.

~~~
whyme
Understood.

PS. You're probably only thinking of the software aspect, but food for thought
- If there was a smartphone-to-wristwatch version - I'd buy one right away,
and I doubt I'd look at the price tag.

~~~
jackowayed
One issue is that kids are a lot more willing to be without this dedicated
tracker than their phone.

As long as they can get the wristwatch back before going home, there's no cost
to leaving the wristwatch where they're supposed to be and then continuing
with their regularly scheduled mischief. But kids hate to be separated from
their phone.

Now, it's possible that it could have some combination of sensors that at
least made pretty sure that some humanoid was wearing the thing. But that
increases the cost and battery usage.

Another issue is that the kids could just "forget" to charge it a lot.

Integrating it with their phone means that most things that keep the tracking
from working also keeps them from using their phone, which is pretty much a
nightmare to most teens.

~~~
philwelch
Is there any reason kids can't abandon the tracker-phone and buy a separate,
prepaid phone they use to keep in touch with friends?

~~~
jackowayed
Um, it costs money (both a fairly hefty (for a kid) price up front, and
recurring). And at the rate most kids text, it would cost a lot of money on a
prepaid plan.

And then if they want to use a phone in their parents' presence, they need to
be using the iPhone.

And the parents might wonder why the kids almost never answer their calls (to
the iPhone).

------
ck2
How about picking up the phone and asking where they are?

I mean knowing _where_ they are doesn't tell you if they are doing something
they should not be doing, which after watching the trouble these kids in this
neighborhood get into between 3pm and 6pm before their parents get home -
trust me you better find out _what_ your kids are up to, not just _where_.

~~~
jamesg
There'll definitely still be times when you'll want to pick up the phone and
call them. For sure.

But our belief is that there's also plenty of times when you really do just
want to know where they are. If you're a busy person (say you're a single
parent who's at work when their kids arrive home), being able to quickly check
that your kids got home ok is huge piece of mind, for a very small time
investment. Also consider the equation when you've got a few kids running
around -- being able to open our app and see where they all are in a second or
two is going to be easier than calling them all up. There will also be times
when you're in a meeting and discreetly checking this app is going to work
much better than running outside to make a few calls and track down all your
children.

~~~
ck2
Kids are pretty damn smart when it comes to lying, unfortunately.

I think they are going to learn to come home, leave their phone there (or at a
friend's house) and then go do whatever they want, secure in knowing they are
definitely fooling mom/dad.

So you are right back to where you were before they had a phone at all.

~~~
shykes
I think you underestimate how addicted kids are to their smartphones. There's
no way they're going to hang out with friends without it. How would they take
their hourly facebook portrait?

------
jscore
I don't understand this whole spying on your kids market.

I wouldn't spy on my kids. Lack of trust becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How about spying on your gf or bf or something?

~~~
smokey_the_bear
I have no need to know where my fiance is at all times, but I really like
being able to see where he is on Google Latitude. It often saves a phone call
and makes planning simpler, I can see when he's on his way home.

~~~
mickdj
Yeah we're really aiming to cut down the number of times you have to call and
say 'Where are you?' 'Where are you now?' 'How about now?' :-)

------
DavidSJ
I, like others, have serious ethical problems with this and am disappointed in
YC for funding it.

------
dman
I think this and similar products also opens a business opportunity for making
software / services for kids that allow them to evade these controls.

------
olalonde
I wonder about the legality of this service. Are parents really allowed to
track their kids in this fashion? Until what age? etc. This isn't meant to be
rhetorical as I am really ignorant on the matter.

~~~
jackowayed
I don't think there's any law against it if the kids know about it (and thus
consent by taking the iPhone and enabling the app).

If the kids are over 18 and you were to track them without their knowledge,
that might be illegal.

~~~
statictype
_don't think there's any law against it if the kids know about it (and thus
consent by taking the iPhone and enabling the app)_

Are you implying that kids need to consent to being tracked by their parents?
That's.... interesting.

~~~
jackowayed
I mentioned consent to cover 18+ "kids". What I said is that if they know
about it it's always ok (because they're consenting, so there's definitely no
issue.). If they're over 18 and they don't consent, I feel like that should be
illegal, but I don't know for sure. If they're under 18, I'm pretty sure they
don't need to consent, since parents can basically make them do whatever.

Not certain on any of that, though.

~~~
mickdj
So we deliberately designed the system to be 2-way - both parents and kids
need to consent and are aware that their location is being broadcast.

Additionally, on iPhone you can always tell when location services are running
as there's an arrow that appears in the top bar. You can also see in
Settings->General->Location Services which applications are using it.

------
hartror
Alternate title:

    
    
        Whereoscope give parents a way to find their kids lost iPhones.

------
nreece
I wonder if the founders are parents in real-life?

~~~
mickdj
We're not, but I was a junior high school teacher in Japan for 2 years before
I moved to the US.

Mick

~~~
nicholasjbs
Why the heck is a question up-voted to 4 points and its actual answer down-
voted to 0?

------
dzlobin
It seems really odd to me that there are such gaps in logic in this.

"Sorry mom, my phone died" This will actually happen because obviously your
child will play with it all day and we all know what an iphone battery is like

But if they wanted to hide something, do you really think they won't figure
out how to turn this app off/spoof their location?

------
duck
Does app naming not matter very much when it comes to the App Store? It seems
like their original name was a lot better with ChildPulse. Also, did anyone
notice how they alternated with the misspelling of "Wherescope" and the
correct name?

------
nitesher
did the founders think about other markets? i see a better use with my parents
(65+) than my child since she doesn't/won't have an iPhone 3gs or 4.

~~~
jamesg
Definitely!

Whereoscope lets you setup 4 people at the moment (and we can always make it
more or fewer at any time), so they don't _need_ to be your kids.

We're really excited about seeing how people will take this thing and use it.
It's awesome as a founder to see people making use of your product in ways you
didn't expect. So you can be sure that if people want to do this, we'll evolve
the product to make sure it's an awesome experience for them.

We picked families as a starting point because we got a lot of feedback that
this is something people wanted, but we'll definitely be watching to see how
people use it.

------
Poiesis
I have four kids and would consider this product.

Of course, I have similar software monitoring my bike commute for my wife's
edification. I'm the one who set it up; I don't feel particularly oppressed.

I would hope that my kids would view this as an easy way to keep the parents
up to date without having to actually call/SMS.

