Frequently Asked Questions

1) What Does the Service Provide?

United Parents Child-Protection Service™ provides safety for children who browse the internet and an early warning system for their concerned parents. Today’s children have more social connections on the web than anywhere else. They are exposed to potentially risky interactions on multiple online platforms, including social networks, instant messaging services and more. United Parents helps you be aware of your child’s behavior on the internet so you can provide your advice, experience and support.

Parents receive peace of mind knowing they will be alerted when any suspicious relationships or activities are detected. United Parents Child-Protection Service™ also alerts parents when a child mentions critical topics repeatedly, creating opportunities for parental intervention and dialogue. Offline conversations then can facilitate the building of trust between you and your child and lead to safer internet use.

The service looks at the entire set of interactions and relationships of the child on the web. It monitors surfing habits, chat content and social network behavior. A baseline for the child’s normal activity is established, and an early alert is generated whenever significant variations are detected.

United Parents Child-Protection Service™ provides increasingly secure protection for all members as the user-base grows – thanks to an early-warning system powered by all previously identified threat patterns. The strength of the parent community is harnessed to protect every child.

2) What threats does the service detect?

The United Parents Child-Protection Service™ provides parents with an early warning system for one of several topics:

Child – adult relationships – which may be on-line predatory relationships;
Child exposure to online bullying – or being involved in online fights;
Child exposure of private information;
Meaningful deviations in child’s mood;
Specific risks, such as eating disorders.

3) Why should I provide information about my children?

A child’s age and gender are vital to understand how (s)he behaves in comparison to their peers. A chat between a sixteen and an eighteen year old may be interpreted as normal and safe, but the same conversation between a twelve and an eighteen year old should be viewed differently and may require your attention. Knowing your child’s age and gender helps us personalize our alerts to your child’s specific situation.

4) How does United Parents ensure my child’s privacy?

We use computerized algorithms to analyze your child’s online content. Based on this analysis, our system generates a Big Picture assessment – this is what we present to you. We do not share your child’s private IMs and social media content with you or with anyone else.

5) Why should I invite my friends to join the service?

The United Parents Child-Protection Service™ not only monitors the interactions and relationships of your child, but all other registered children as well. The more children we protect, the easier it is to detect suspicious attempts to contact them, and the tighter our ‘safety net’ becomes. When an individual endangers a child in our subscriber network, the interaction pattern is recorded. If a similar pattern develops between this person and another child we protect, it is detected immediately and an alert is sent to the child’s parent.

6) Which operating systems are supported?

Currently supported operating systems:

Windows XP;
Windows Vista;
Windows 7;

Currently not supported:

Earlier Windows versions are not supported;
Macintosh and cellular devices are not supported right now. We plan to develop these soon and we will notify you when any of these becomes available.

7) How to register to the United Parents Child-Protection Service™

In order to join the United Parents Child Protection Service™ you need to follow the steps below:

Go to http://www.unitedparents.com/
Press on the “Get Started” button
Fill in your details as indicated in the screen. Note that fields marked with * are mandatory fields, although we recommend you fill in all the fields, as this will ensure a better service. When finished press on “Complete Registration” button at the end of the page.
Soon you should receive an email asking you to validate your email address.
Click on the link that appears in this email and enter your credentials to log in.
Welcome to United Parents Child-Protection Service. You are now part of the growing community of parents protecting their kids online.
In order to allow United Parents Child-Protection Service to gather the data for analysis, you'll have to download and install the i-Guard module. Please refer to the section below to understand how to do that.

8) How to download and install the i-Guard module?

After registering to the United Parents Child-Protection Service you'll have to download and install the i-Guard module in order to allow United Parents Service to gather the data from your child’s computer and analyze it.

There are several ways to download and install the i-Guard. Follow the steps below on each of your children's computers. Make sure your computer operating system is supported (See: Question 6 - Windows supported versions):

Turn on the computer where you want to install the i-Guard.
Make sure the account you are using has administrative rights on this computer. To do that – :
In Windows XP:
1. Go to Control Panel
2. Double click “User accounts”
  
  May also appear as:
3. Check whether the user you are logged in as is an administrator:
If this is not the case, you'll have to use another account.

In Vista & Windows 7:
1. Go to control panel
2. Choose the sub-menu “Add or remove user accounts” under the “User Accounts and Family Safety”
3. Check whether the user you are logged in as is an administrator:
4. If your account does not have administrator rights, look for another account which does.
Open your favorite browser, (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Chrome…) and type the following address in the address line: http://www.unitedparents.com

You will get to the login-password page
Type in your login (the email you have registered with) and your password. You will then be directed to the alerts page.
Click on the "Downloads" button (in the top of the screen) - and you will get to the "download" page.

In this page - click on the “Download Now” button.
A dialogue pops up; (picture) you can choose to either save or install the i-Guard.
1. We recommend installing the i-Guard directly upon its download.
2. If you choose to save it – please pick a place on the hard-disk that you will remember later on as you will need to activate it for the actually installation.
Download will start. When it is completed -
1. The install will automatically start in case you asked to install it directly upon download.
2. You'll need to activate the i-Guard installable client (by double-clicking on it) from the place on the hard disk it was saved on.
Click yes; review the terms of use. Approving them will take you to the next step; press “accept” and “install” whenever prompted.
Click "Finish"
Upon completing the installation - the i-Guard interacts with the United Parents Child Protection Server - to ensure that the installation has completed safely. You may be receiving a firewall or an anti-virus notification that this is the case. If this happens, please mark both "allow the communication" and "remember my answer" - before you approve the communication.
You should be receiving an email and a notification on your private account that the installation completed successfully.
Repeat these stages on all of your children's computers. Alternatively - you can copy the saved file to another computer where your children surf the Internet, and install the i-Guard from the copied file.
For each installed i-Guard instance - make sure to verify on your private section in the United Parents website that a "successful Installation message" appears.
If you have installed on multiple computers you will be able to get an indication about it in the “Initial Findings” tab in the Settings part of the United Parents Child Protection Service web application (picture)

9) How do I know the system is working and the installation completed successfully?

You'll know the i-Guard module has successfully installed when the phrase "Installation Completed Successfully” appears on your screen. After a few days, you can expect to receive our ‘Request for Configuration’ email, where we ask your help identifying the usernames of each child. This means our service has started the process of detecting the online users in your household.

10) Where are the Initial Findings located and what do they mean?

To get to the "Initial Findings" press the "Account Settings" button. You will be in the "General Settings" tab. Click on the "Initial Findings" tab.

Here you will see the various multiple identities/users that were detected on your children's computers. This may include email addresses (often used for identification within Facebook and other social networks), account login names, nicknames which are often used instead of real names, and so on. In order to individually protect your child, and in order to not monitor people that need not be monitored, we would like to know the associations between these usernames and your children. Any username or nickname that you know the child uses, and can be associated with him/her, is helpful to acknowledge so we can begin monitoring the behavior. This is done by clicking on the pull down menu. The list will contain: the name of the children you've provided, an "I don't know" option, and "Do not Monitor". You're expected to use the United Parents Child-Protection Service to monitor only kids who are under your custody.

In the figure below you can see the various alternatives for marking each username:


Observed usernames: the email addresses that were detected for each of the monitored applications, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo IM etc.	PC where user was detected: You may give different names to each of the computers where the i-Guard is installed, so you can differentiate between them.	Your association-choice: The child you believe is the owner of the relevant username. In the upper half are usernames that were not associated, yet. In the lower half you can see the selected users and the “Do not monitor” user. This should be used to denote to the system that this is an adult or a child that should not be covered by the protection service, as you are not his/her legal guardian.

11) How do I add another child to the service? How can I remove a child from the service?

Once you have installed the i-Guard software, you can edit your child's information or add another child at anytime. Go to the "Account Settings" button and find the "General Settings" tab.

FAQ_General Settings_Top

Look towards the bottom of the page and find "Enter Child Details". Here you can change your child's information and add a child to the service.

Note: "Remove" stops the monitoring and information services for this child. It does not mean deactivation; If you want to deactivate and completely stop the service for all of your children, please see below “How do I deactivate from the United Parents Child-Protection Service?”.

FAQ_Enter Child Details

12) I just finished installing the i-Guard. When will I see the actual data?

It will take a few days from the moment you complete the installation on your child's computer, until we can complete the analysis of your child's internet habits. During this period, data is being gathered, and your child is already protected.

In addition, during this time, we may request of you to associate your child's account with the various usernames (nicknames and emails) that were observed on the computer. You will be able to see this in "Initial Findings" under the "Account Settings" button. Once this association is complete, it will take us a few hours up to a couple of days to complete that analysis of your child's data.

13) I got an Administrative alert saying “Incomplete Install” Or “Incomplete download”. What should I do?

The “Incomplete Install” and “incomplete download” alerts are issued when the system detects that your installation of the i-Guard module software has either not started, or did not complete well, and thus the service is not fully activated. This can happen if your i-Guard installation failed or never initiated. In these cases we advise you to install the i-Guard you’ve already downloaded, or download it again and then install it.

Installing i-Guard on other computers in your home incurs no additional fees and ensures that your children will stay safe when they use computers shared with the rest of the family.

See “how to download and install”.

14) What are the types of alerts I get?

There are two types of alerts:

Behavioral alerts – these are alerts informing you about your child’s online activity. Examples of interactions that will trigger an alert include: when your child interacts with an unfamiliar person, when your child is being bullied (or bullying someone else), or when your child’s mood appears to have changed dramatically.
Administrative alerts – these are alerts informing you about technical changes that are detected by our system, which may require your attention (e.g. No online activity by your child detected for the past few days will be sent to you if we have observed no activity from the child for several days in a row. If your child has not been away from their computers, we will help you troubleshoot the issue to restore the connection).

Behavioral alerts are color coded according to the perceived threat level. Positive, responsible communications patterns are colored in green, early warnings are marked in orange, and urgent alerts which require your immediate attention are marked in red. Administrative alerts are blue.

Alerts may refer to one of several topics:

Child – adult relationships – which may be on-line predatory relationships;
Child exposure to online bullying – or being involved in online fights;
Child exposure of private information;
Meaningful deviations in child’s mood;
Specific risks, such as eating disorders.

15) What should I do when I get a “behavioral alert”?

Many of our alerts require little or no action, others may be alarming. Even if you think you must act immediately, we suggest you do not. Pausing to think about the situation and consulting with your spouse or with an expert is highly recommended. We will typically refer you to “What to do next”. We also provide additional resources, which you might find useful for your specific case.

Regularly talking to your child about their online interactions may be another good option. Many factors contribute to this conversation: your child’s age, maturity, whether they know that you are tracking their online interactions, and more. We strongly recommend that you consult a professional on how to best approach the issue with your child.

Behavioral alerts can include ‘positive indicators’ marked in green. They indicate that your child is “internet smart” and knows how to avoid risks. This could be an excellent background for a conversation about Internet safety between you and your child. An ongoing dialogue with your child about potential Internet risks and ways to remain safe is highly recommended.

16) Who should I contact if an urgent alert has been detected?

Receiving an urgent alert can be alarming. Remaining calm and responding thoughtfully is crucial to neutralizing the threat to your child. We recommended that you consult with a professional. Depending on your relationship with your child, you may choose to discuss the relevant issues with them.

If you think your child is in imminent danger, (examples: planning to meet an unfamiliar adult, threatening suicide) please contact your local law enforcement agency or call 911.

17) What should I do in response to an “administrative alert?”

If the alert is an indication that you should visit the site, please click the provided link or visit the homepage and login. You will be prompted on the next step you should follow.

If the administrative alert indicates that the i-Guard is not communicating with our server properly, please check all the computers where our software was installed. You'll want to confirm the computer(s) are powered on and connected to the internet. If you determine they are, we recommend that you re-install the i-Guard on the relevant computers.

18) A "silent i-Guard, missing information" alert was received. What should I do?

Such an alert can result from several reasons. The most common one is that the child's computer may be turned off, broken, or not connected to the Internet. Another possibility is that the i-Guard software may have become outdated or was tampered with.

If the child's computer is shut down or not connected to the Internet, we suggest that you turn it on for a day and make sure the Internet connection is secure so that our service can get synchronized.
If the computer is broken, please make sure that the i-Guard software is working properly after the computer is repaired. If this is the only computer used by your child, you will be able to see that data is updated as soon as the computer is restored. If this does not happen, the easiest method is to download and re-install the i-Guard module on the computer.
If a new computer is introduced, it is recommended that you download and install the i-Guard software on this new computer.
If you determine that the computer is working properly and is connected to the Internet, please download and re-install the i-Guard software.

19) How often is the information on the dashboard updated?

The dashboard – a summary of your child’s Internet behavior – is updated on a regular basis, but reflects a one-week time window. However, information about your child’s risk is continuously evaluated, and alerts are issued as soon as new data is processed, typically within a few hours.

20) What are the various indicators on the dashboard, and what are their meanings?

Measurements summary:

Overall assessment indicator: compares all monitored aspects of your child’s online behavior to a “typical” child of the same age and gender. If the needle is anywhere to the right of center, your child may be exposed to some increased risk.

Active online daily periods:

Usage-time indicator: displays the total amount of time your child spends on the web, as well as the amount for a typical child of the same age and gender. On the right, we show you the most active periods per day your child used the Internet during the past week.

Social networks popularity:

Friendship indicator: reflects your child’s activities on social networks

Total: represents the total number of friends your child has connections with on various social networks and instant messaging services
Actively communicating: friends with whom your child had any exchange in the past week
New: new connections made within the past week

A large number of new friends may indicate some instability or change in your child’s social life. A question to ask yourself might be: Does my child have many friends because (s)he is outgoing, or does this indicate a change (s)he is going through?

Network social life statistics:

Hourly-interaction indicator: shows the time of day and duration of your child’s interactions with their `most meaningful’ friends on IM and social networks. (`Most meaningful’ represents who your child spends the most time interacting with and sharing the greatest amount of content with.) Questions to ask might be: Do you know who these people are? Are you aware of the amount of time your child spends with each of them? Are you aware of the total time (s)he spends chatting online? Are you aware of the times of day your child is online?

Topic frequencies:

Conversation topics indicator: displays the most prevalent topics your child discussed with their friends in the last week. It’s a good indication of what’s on your child’s mind.

21) How can I contact United Parents?

Email us at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

22) What if I cannot find an answer to my questions?

Email us your question to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

23) How do I deactivate the United Parents Child-Protection service?

You can deactivate the United Parents Child-Protection Service by first going to the "Account Settings" button and find the "General Settings" tab. Click the "Deactivate Service" button at the bottom of the page. In order to reactivate our service, you will need to sign up for a new account.

FAQ_Deactivate Account

24) I accidentally deactivated my account. How can I reactivate it?

When you deactivate your account, you will receive an email from us affirming the deactivation. You can cancel the deactivation within 48 hours through the instructions provided in the email. After 48 hours, however, the deactivation is finalized, and you will need to sign up for a new account to start the service again.