A messenger application exclusively for little ones. Facebook sold this new product as a secure tool with some specially made qualities for the kids that converted the envirointment aparently, with security on it. As you should know, the network access without parental control for the kids is a serious threat to their privacity, with important events like the one shown by this media on Youtube. However, Facebook has communicated to the parents of the kids that user Messenger Kids about the existence of a design error that allowed the kids to chat with unknown people, precisely what was supposed not to happen.
How does Messenger Kids work exactly? It is a version of the popular messenger app Messenger, but with limited access and funcionality and under the supervision of the parents, so the kids can chat with their friends ina secure way. With this app, kids can chat and even make videocalls with their contacts that had been previously approved by their progenitors that, at the same time, have access to the calls history and conversations that never deletes.
If the parents are the ones that accept the people that talk with their children and have complete access to their activity… where is the problem? As it looks, in the most unespected flank of a company with experience and with the renown of Facebook: the design. The way Messenger Kids is created, it is true that the parents must authorize the contacts of their children, but they, at the same time, can create groups and Facebook didn’t take in minds that when a kid accesses to a group created by other, they can contact with other group members that are not approved by their parents.
The way the app was designed, a kid with supervision can make videocalls with an unknown person without knowing their parents, a very big error that the famous brands have confirmed and they are already solving it. In this way, the first meassure approved by Facebook, has been to eliminate the groups in which the anomalies have been detected and they confirmed that this error only affects to a “reduced number of chats”. They don’t know since when is this error working, but without doubt the complaints of external groups and the ONGs of the USA that asked with a letter to Mark Zuckerberg to move away the app considering that the kids could be affected in their development by being incited to stay more time online