Episode 53: Smart phone apps & features made for hiding things!

These apps and smart phone features help keep things hidden on a smart phone! If giving your kid a smart phone, learn about these today! 

 

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 FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Holy Toledo, you are not going to believe this. I'm going to share with you today. Some different things that you may not be aware that your smartphone can do, and in the hands of your kids, it can be a really, really scary thing. So stay tuned. We're going to chat about this.

Speaker 2 (00:20):

Welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age, inspired by a mother's love with a relatable, real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the bead that mom movement with your host, Dolly Denson.

Speaker 1 (00:46):

Did you hear there is an app that will transform the safety of your kids, smartphone and technology use. It is my favorite way to sleep easy at night and have peace of mind because it is monitoring my kids' activity online without me being in their business. It is the bark app and yes, bark like a dog bark bark bark. It tells you when there's something that you need to be concerned about starting at a small fee each month, you can protect your whole family across all devices. Get connected with bark today. Use code, be that mom for 20% off your subscription for life and get a seven day free trial to check it out. So I truly believe that curiosity is something that is just innate and natural for a kid to have, but with a smartphone in their hands, it is like, I don't even know the analogy to, to describe it as, but basically we're like putting a ticking time bomb in their hands.

Speaker 1 (01:43):

When we put a smartphone in their hands, and I've said, this, I've known this over the last year and a half, but these things that I'm going to share with you today are things that I didn't know our phones could do. And if I found the information which was on Instagram, I know that my kids could find it too. And your kids might as well and all in all, you know, when we give them a phone and we help guide them, there has to be a certain amount of trust. There we have to, you know, eventually allow them to do things. But if we're giving our kids a smartphone, when they're like middle school, age, or a little bit older, it can be a recipe for disaster, especially when they are able to do these things are run to talk about today. So I bet this is going to blow your mind.

Speaker 1 (02:26):

Like it didn't mind. So the other day I was on Instagram and I don't even know how I found this video, but it was basically a video that was like, I bet you didn't know what your iPhone can do. And I went and looked at his account and he has like multiple, multiple, multiple videos about all these different things that your iPhone can do that you may not have been aware of. Now, if you are not an Apple person and you have an Android phone, yours will probably be a little bit different than this, but still listen in because I bet you have something very, very similar in your Android phone. Now, when it comes to kids, this is one reason to put bark on that phone, no matter which type of phone they have, because bark is going to monitor their activity and let you know of concerning conversations and different activities.

Speaker 1 (03:13):

On top of that, having screen time controls to where they cannot download an app without you knowing, and they cannot delete an app without you, knowing will be helpful. If you have that set up beforehand, when you give them a phone, or you can do that ASAP. But if you haven't done that when your kid has had free reign for any period of time, these are some things that you need to be aware of in, you know, either way you need to be aware of these things because they completely blew my mind as I checked them out. Okay. So the first one is having hidden folders on your phone. Let me kind of describe for you. I'm not going to go into too much technical detail, but let me kind of describe for you what this looks like. So there's an app that's called shortcuts on your phone and you click on there to create a shortcut.

Speaker 1 (04:02):

And then you add an action. So say you have an app that you don't want your parent to know that you have on your phone. So you add the shortcut, you select the app and then you add it to your home screen. And then you can change the picture of the app on your home screen. So maybe like, make it look like a calculator or the weather app, several different apps that you as a parent would be like, Oh, no big deal. You know, it's just a weather app when it's actually them hiding another app. So getting around this would be to know what apps they have on their phone and that they're not able to download it or just get that smartphone out of their hands and give them a pinwheel phone problem solved. But that is one way that they may be hiding an app that you have said that you do not want them to have such as Snapchat, such as Tik TOK, such as Instagram, those types of things.

Speaker 1 (04:58):

Okay. The second thing that I discovered is secret photo app. Now this one is very interesting. I had no idea. If you go to the app store and search S a or secret photo album, there is an app that can be downloaded. And once that is downloaded, they can hide pictures in there. They can lock it with the password. They can even put a fake pin on it to where, when, like, if you were to say, what is this app? And then you click on it and it goes to, for you to enter a pin and you tell them what your pin, they can set it up to where that fake pin opens it, but opens it up to fake pictures or pictures that they've put there. So they basically could pull one over on you while you're thinking that they are giving you the pin to look at it.

Speaker 1 (05:48):

Okay. So they can put a fake pin on it that shows fake pictures. And they also can set it up to where, and I say they, but this could be anyone that's wanting to be dishonest on a phone, not necessarily our kids, but it's just important to be aware that these things are out there and that there are ways to hide things, but they also have it set up to where, if someone were to guess the pin on the app, like the correct pin and they get in, then the app takes a picture of that person and sends an alert to the owner of the phone. And then this app also has the capability of when the phone is turned face down. It will auto switch to another app. I don't know about you, but I've had it happen to where I walk into a room when one of my kids is on their phone and they immediately hide it, or they put it face down.

Speaker 1 (06:36):

Well, this app, when you put it face down would switch to another app. So even if you picked it up to say, what's on your phone, it wouldn't show them that. Okay. So it's called secret photo album, or just put in essay in the app store and it'll come up. It'll show you what the icon is. Okay. This third, third thing is where you can create secret messages. And this would be in the notes app on their phone. So the regular notes app, it's not an app that they download. So you having screen time restrictions on their phone, wouldn't catch this, but in the notes app, you can type a subject. And then you can add someone to that note. And then you can also lock the note. So if, when you add someone, that person that you added, they could speak to each other in the note could also be locked to where you cannot see it, that one's quite disturbing, right?

Speaker 1 (07:32):

Because that's already on their phone. That's no type of new adding that also could be done with a Google drive. You know, if you have restrictions and all they have access to, is there stuff for school, you can do that in a Google drive. You share a link between two people and you can talk back and forth on a Google doc or something like that. So once technology gets into their hands, there are so many ways around your monitoring and your restrictions, but something like bark would still pick this stuff up conversations and things going on. Okay. The next one is, if you have iOS 14 on your phone, if you hold down the screen, when you were on your regular phone and the little dots pop up at the bottom, like if you're on the regular page of your phone, the little dots, pop up at the bottom, tap on those dots.

Speaker 1 (08:20):

And let me see if it's going to do it for me. I'm trying to do it as I talk to you. So let me start again. So on your phone, I don't, if you hold down the screen and then if your phone is updated to the most recent update, you hold down the screen, like your finger on the screen, the little dots pop up at the bottom. You can click on those. There it goes. And then you can edit the pages. So you basically could have a screen of apps and you can remove them. So if you're like checking to see what apps they have on their phone, they could remove this one of apps. And then it's not going to show up for you. They can still get to it in their phone, but it won't show up as a page of apps. So they could certainly hide apps that they have downloaded from you completely by deleting that page on their home screens.

Speaker 1 (09:10):

Now, this one is something that can help you. We got to have some positive in this, right? Instead of being stressed about all these things, this is something that I learned that probably could have saved us a couple of dollars here and there. But if your kid or you gets water on your phone or drops water, or like drops it in water, or somehow gets wet, there is a water shortcut, a water eject shortcut that you can add to your phone. So Google water shortcut, and get the shortcut added to your phone. And then if it's dropped in water, you say, Hey, Siri, water, eject, shortcut, Oh, shoot. My computer's popping up the water reject thing. Hold on. I gotta turn this off. And it's going to start trying to eject it off of my phone. So you say, Hey, Siri. And then you say to pull up the water reject shortcut, and then actually please a sound that ejects the water out of the speakers of the phone.

Speaker 1 (10:09):

So if your kid comes to you saying that they dropped it in water, you can do this quickly and it will help eject the water out of the phone. So that's actually something that's pretty cool. Okay. And then another one to be aware of is a calculator plus app. And basically this is another way for them to hide pictures. So there it's called calculator. Plus there's a couple of different options if you look in the app store, but it's basically a way for them to hide pictures in a vault that just looks like a calculator and they just put in a pin and then it would open up to the pictures. So it would be another way for them to hide pictures from you using the calculator plus app. So lots of ways for them to hide stuff from us, lots of little intricate things about these phones that many of us are probably not aware of.

Speaker 1 (10:55):

A couple of other things to definitely be aware of is that if they are sending pictures to anyone else, make sure that the location is turned off on pictures. Otherwise when you send a picture to someone, it will, they can basically click on that and tell where that picture was taken. So if they're sending a picture on Snapchat, if they're sending one through Instagram, if it's to someone they don't know in real life, those are things that are very, very, very concerning for their safety. So definitely look into those as far as making sure that they aren't sending pictures to other people with the location on that picture, like the, whatever the geo tracking or whatever it is. And then other than that, some apps have it set up to where it now can say their precise location. So I would go into settings and turn off the location services for anything that doesn't have to have it on.

Speaker 1 (11:47):

So, you know, like a weather app, maybe it needs to have it on, maybe it doesn't, but, you know, use your own judgment to look through through those different apps and turn off location services, because they certainly have had instances where a predator of some kind, someone who has ill intent towards our children poses as a kid or a friend, and is able to track them down in real time through things like Snapchat in order to prey on them. So it's certainly something to be aware of, but all in all, as you can see, there are so many intricacies with these phones, if at all possible delay giving your ghetto a smartphone. I don't say that to laugh, to make light of it, but delay giving your kid a smartphone, if you can, as long as you can. And then after that, you know, proceed with caution and with a proactive stance, use bark.

Speaker 1 (12:37):

If you aren't already used my code, be that mom to get the discount on it. And that will help kind of be your eyes and ears for a lot of this stuff. And then if you do discover that things are being hidden from you, of course, that's your judgment call as a parent, how to proceed with that. But my personal opinion is that if they are hiding things from me while they do deserve some sort of privacy, you know, to the extent of, you know, growing up and wanting to have their own private life in their own private thoughts or whatever, if they are hiding things from me and I discover that somehow that's putting them in danger or is not for their best interest in their future and all of that, then it's time to pull that phone away. It's time to pull those privileges away.

Speaker 1 (13:21):

In my personal opinion, a phone is not a right. It is a privilege that is earned and just like anything else in life, if it's not being used responsibly. And I find that it is putting them in a place of danger, then it's time to pull that away for a little bit. We grew up without phones, they can do it too. That's what I've said before. So anyways, that is totally your judgment, your call, but I tried to do the little dance of giving trust and, you know, let's just kind of figure this out until it became evident that that just wasn't possible until we pulled away from that for a little bit. And that allowed us to reset from everything, you know, figure out what's most important in our lives and then take baby steps forward toward allowing more independence again. And that was probably the best thing we have ever done as parents was to put our foot down harder than we ever had before pull the electronics away completely until we could reassess and get our, you know, footing on the ground again, and then move forward from there.

Speaker 1 (14:20):

So you discover the dishonesty, use your own judgment, offer them to make decisions going forward. But if it comes to it, pull that thing away and reassess readjust allowed him to detox, allowed them to realize that there's more to life than what's on Snapchat or Instagram and all of those things. Cause I do think these digital things certainly make their childhoods much more complicated and making them feel like they are not enough. And all of the things that come with that, I think our childhood without the digital things was while still complicated was a much simpler time. So definitely don't hesitate to put your foot down on that as the parent, as you're moving forward. But I hope that this was helpful for you with different secret apps and secret ways that they could get around us. And if you've had some suspicion of something dishonest going on underneath the surface, maybe it's one of these things that's going on. So check that out. Okay. All right. Chat with you next time.

Speaker 2 (15:18):

Thanks for tuning in being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community till next time. So before

Speaker 1 (15:32):

Where you go check this out, if you are a mom that is listening to this podcast, you are wanting to keep your kids safe in the digital world. But let me tell you what is so very powerful and what helped me so so much when things got really tough in my parenting of the digital natives world, I already had a routine of taking care of myself every day with not only the simple things like drinking more water and getting enough sleep most of the time. Anyway. Um, but I also had a routine of exercise in a routine of fueling my body with good nutrition, with guaranteed nutrition, through a smoothie, with tools that helped me during my workouts and this routine. It sounds silly that it could help so much, but it did help me so much when I was gutted by the challenges of raising kids in this digital age, it helped me have a safe place.

Speaker 1 (16:23):

It helped me have a strength that I otherwise would not have mentally and spiritually and physically. And then it also on a day to day basis helps me to be more present for the kids because I'm more present for myself. First, if you do not have this in your life, I want to connect you with this. I want to simplify this for you, connect with me and I will connect you with tools that work for anyone that simplify everything around exercising and eating and making this a habit that sticks. And that will be an example for your kids and your family. Connect with me. We'll have a discovery session. We'll figure out which options will work best for you. And then I will connect you with my online community to help support you as you get started and to help you keep up the motivation and the momentum to make this a lifestyle switch that lasts forever. So connect with me today.