Supervised Contact List for Child Safety
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current digital devices lack effective mechanisms for parents or supervisors to control and manage interactions of child users with unknown or untrusted individuals, leading to safety concerns and increased parental effort in monitoring device activities.
Innovation Solution
A supervised contact list system that associates user accounts with a supervised contact list, allowing supervisors to approve or deny interactions, automatically consulting the list to permit or block activities with users not pre-approved, reducing the need for constant parental intervention.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a supervised contact list system is implemented to control user interactions, then safety of child users is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-approving contacts before interactions occur. Supervisors can pre-approve contacts in advance, and the system automatically checks these pre-approved lists during device interactions, eliminating the need for real-time supervisor intervention and reducing complexity while maintaining safety
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables self-service by automatically checking user identifiers against the supervised contact list without requiring constant parental monitoring. The device autonomously determines whether to permit or block interactions based on the pre-configured contact list, reducing the need for ongoing parental effort while ensuring child safety
2Ease of operation
If automatic approval process is implemented, then parental effort is reduced, but automation extent increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system reduces parental effort by performing preliminary approval actions. Supervisors set up the contact list in advance, and the system automatically handles all subsequent approval decisions based on this pre-configured list, minimizing ongoing parental involvement while maintaining appropriate oversight
Solution Approach 2:
The supervised contact list acts as an intermediary between parents and children's interactions. Instead of direct parental monitoring of each interaction, the system uses the pre-configured contact list as a mediator to automatically permit or block interactions, reducing parental effort while providing structured automation
3Reliability
If contact list verification is performed for each activity, then interaction safety is improved, but processing time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs verification in advance by maintaining a pre-configured supervised contact list. When interactions occur, the system quickly checks user identifiers against this existing list rather than performing complex verification in real-time, ensuring interaction safety while minimizing processing time and loss of time
Data Source
AI summary
Implementations relate to a supervised contact list for user accounts. In some implementations, a method includes determining an activity related to a particular user is pending on a device operated by a supervised user associated with a supervised account. The method includes associating the particular user with a particular user identifier, and determining whether the particular user identifier is present on a supervised contact list associated with the supervised account, where the supervised contact list comprises identifiers for one or more users. The one or more users are selected by a supervisor user. The method includes determining that the activity related to the particular user to be performed should be disallowed, based on whether the particular user identifier is present on the supervised contact list, and terminating the activity related to the particular user.