CES: Taser’s Turn at Cellphone Safety
For parents who want to keep their kids from sexting–or just texting at the dinner table–new cellphone software called Protector keeps them in the loop.
Protector, which debuts Thursday at CES, is made by Taser International, a company that’s best known for its series of electronic stun guns (watch the video below, from CES 2009, to see The Journal’s Andy Jordan test one out for himself).
Protector uses GPS so that a child’s calls, texts, emails and photos are first routed to the parent’s phone, where they can be screened and blocked if desired. It also monitors a child’s location and can even track driving habits, Taser said. (In case you’re wondering, it emphasized that Protector is not a stun gun.)
Parents can dial up restrictions by, say, blocking all calls from outside a local area code, or ease up by allowing all text messages to be received. “It grows with the child,” a Taser spokesman said, in that the special needs of each age group can be addressed.
