Who would you rather trust? Your child, or an app?

According to a Pew Research Center’s study from 2016, a majority of parents used at least one method of monitoring their children’s activity online:

• 61% have checked which websites their teen child visited
• 60% checked their social media profile
• 48% looked through their messages

Some parents also go the more extreme route of tracking and recording their kids’ movement and life in real-time.

What are parental control apps?

Parental control apps are tools that help parents monitor, manage, and restrict their children’s online activity and device usage.

And they are extremely popular, especially in the English-speaking world.

• Life360, an app that tracks family members’ location in real-time, hit 80 million users in 2024 (an increase of 300% since 2020).
• Another popular app, Find my kids, tracks child’s movements, sends notifications when they enter or leave common places (home/school), shows which apps the child uses, and even allows for the parent to “listen” to the child’s surroundings. It has over 50,000,000 downloads on the Play Store in 2025 (almost 5x increase since 2022).
• Bark monitors messengers, texts, scans 24 social media apps for “potential safety concerns”, and can alert the parent to sexting, cyber-bullying and depression. As of April 2025, the Play Store shows the app was installed over half a million times (500% increase since 2022).

What’s the big deal?

Most of these apps promote an increased safety for the child, and it is very easy to see why parents would be interested. However, what often gets left out of the conversation are the privacy concerns.

Parental monitoring software are very much like anti-virus programs. They may help increase security of your child to an extent, but they come at a high cost of personal privacy.

These terms are often used interchangeably and in conjunction with each other, but there is a difference between them.

Privacy refers to the ability to choose when, how and to whom to disclose personal information, while security is the protection of personal information. An example of privacy would be choosing who knows about your child’s struggle with depression, while security would be the steps taken to protect the data file of their therapist visits. 

The unseen risk of child tracking apps

Parents may trust the reputation of these tech companies to handle their children’s data in a respectful manner. However, an app rarely stands on its own, especially if it’s somewhat popular. When you download and use an app, you subsequently also do business with all the app’s third-party partners.

Dubious permissions and security risks

These apps also pose a huge security risk.

Almost all parental control apps request access to location, contacts and storage, but some of them aren’t even necessary for the app’s functionality. For example, some apps ask for permissions such as “read calendar”, “read contacts” and “record audio”.

Researchers from SEC Consult Vulnerability Lab uncovered various vulnerabilities pertaining to parental control apps. “The web dashboard of Find My Kids sends varying amounts of data – depending on the mouse movement – to a Russian tracking domain (mc.yandex.ru)”.

These risks are increased even more when it comes to “unofficial” parental control apps. A 2025 study showed that “many sideloaded apps have serious issues around privacy, consent and even safety. For example, if an app tries to hide its presence on a user’s device, it is no different from stalker-ware”.

And it’s not just about risk management, either. These threats are very real. Over 440,000 of Life360 customers had their data leaked on the dark web due to a data breach in 2024.

Tracking your (and your child’s) every step

What most don’t know is to what extent apps can track activities outside of the app itself.

Using apps like these gives them permissions to peer into your other phone activities, including, but not limited to:

• Your common travel routes
• Places you frequent
• Your calendar appointments
• Who you talk to and for how long
• Biometric information
• Digital and physical purchases
• Photos you take
• Search history
• And much more

This information can be used to create a very accurate profile of you and your family members.

Breakdown of popular child tracking apps and their permissions

iOS App Store now requires companies to submit what data they collect and link to your specific profile, and data they collect and use to actively track you.

Here is a general overview:

• Data collected and used to track you
  • The app is collecting personal information about you or your device, and linking it to information collected about you by other websites and apps for advertising purpose
  • The app collects and shares your personal data with third-party data brokers
• Data collected and linked to you
  • The app is collecting data that can be used to personally identify you
  • The app is pulling data from the app account and the device in general in order to create a detailed profile for advertising purposes
• Data collected and not linked to you
  • Data points that are not linked to you in any identifiable way

What do some of these labels mean? You can read more on the official Apple website, but here are the most common ones:

• Contact information: name, phone, email, physical address, etc.
• Health and fitness: health/medical/fitness data collected through any API (interface that allows third-parties to use data/functionality of the app you’re using)
• User content: emails, text messages, photos and videos on the device, voice recordings…
• Identifiers: user screen name, user account ID, account number, device ID
• Purchases: account/user’s purchase history and/or purchase tendencies
• Usage data: launches, data, clicks, scrolls, music listening data, video views, saved content, advertisements the user has seen, other information on how the user interacts with data…

What does all of this mean in practical terms?

A parental monitoring software, depending on the type, would have access to your physical address, your commonly taken routes, your family’s well-being metrics, medical records, sensitive information, photos, and much more, down to how often they listen to sad music or how many times they refresh their Twitter notification page.

Some of the apps haven’t disclosed what data they’re collecting, or how much (NetNanny, OurPact…); granted, it is noted that they will be required to do so in their next update.

This iOS update is the step in the right direction, but it’s still not a guarantee. Companies may provide a general overview of some data they collect, but there is a loophole which allows them not to disclose information on everything they collect. The official Apple website explains that not all data collection needs to be reported, as there are some exceptions. They may need to meet certain criteria, but they still exist.

You can never know for sure how much data is being collected or processed, as they’re closed-source (proprietary) software. Without getting into too many technical details, closed-source software is software whose code isn’t publicly available, and therefore cannot be examined for privacy or security vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

Now that you’re aware of the lengths parental control apps go to track you, and how far their reach is, think a little more about whether you trust the app (and all of their partners) to handle your child’s data with care, keeping in mind the tradeoff between risks to your family’s privacy and security and the need to feel in control.

With how many malicious people are out there, both online and offline, these apps are definitely tempting. Being able to check what your child is doing at any time gives a sense of security.

But it’s also important to understand that by signing up for one of them, you’re also placing your family’s sensitive information in the hands of third-parties you cannot control. Whether that risk is something you’re willing to take, will depend on your situation and personal choice.

My advice is that, before installing these apps, consider having an open discussion with your partner and your children (if they’re old enough to understand the situation), and see if it is possible to improve their safety in ways that don’t involve third parties peering into their lives. Because once that data is out there, it’s out there forever.