PureSight build tools for parents that could get indications of what was happening to their children on the digital platforms to allow parents to be involved in their children’s digital world
Royi Cohen is the founder and CEO of PureSight. he founded PureSight back in 1998, right after graduating with honors from the Technion. According to Cohen, The technological base on which the company was based was an engine based on AI algorithms when their initial application was an engine for website classification. At this stage, the company focused on building products for enterprises that enable content filtering in the organization – “In 2008, we chose to perform a change in our focus and provide an Online Child Safety service for parents”.
In recent years there has been a significant change regarding digital parenting. In 2008, when you just started focusing on this market, the best recommendation for parents who wanted to know what happens to their children online was to put the computer in the living room, today we are in a completely different reality.
what are the parental challenges in the digital world?
Cohen: today, from age 6-7 every child has their own phone, and sometimes we do not even have the password to this device and we are left without the ability to know what is happening to our child on the various digital platforms. There are now several new challenges of digital parenting that today’s parent generation is facing for the first time because these challenges were not for their parents.
We are witnessing that more and more parents today, as their children go to bed, take the child’s device and try to check if something has happened to them on social platforms. Because parents are aware of the dangers their children may be exposed to. Examples: cyberbullying, shaming events, online predators that communicate with the child, but also exposure to dangerous new trends. But here begins the new challenge, not all of us have the password of our child’s device, and not all of us are deeply familiar with the platforms that children use and know how to search for the content they are exposed to. But even if we have overcome these two challenges, there is still the challenge here of reading over 1000 posts a day, most of them are boring and it will take us a lot of time. Plus, when the kids grow up a little bit, we will not feel okay with reading all of their posts, and we will want to provide them some privacy.
What is age-appropriate content?
Cohen: The internet is a wonderful thing, providing us with accessible access to all existing content. The easy access, however, allows young children to be exposed to content that is not appropriate for their age. The challenge for parents is to protect and define the content that the child will be exposed to. Today an 8-year-old boy, at the click of a button, can reach inappropriate sexual content, which we may have a hard time seeing, but he consumes them as easily as any other information. Sometimes he will try to imitate the inappropriate behavior and all this even before holding his hand to his first girlfriend.
Another challenge is Screen Time. Many parents are familiar with the day-to-day fight they have with their children regarding screen time. Most parents today report that their children are spending too much in front of a screen. COVID-19 only boosts the situation as face-to-face interactions becoming less popular and are replaced by interactions on social digital platforms. But the bigger picture is, that the same 10-year-old boy who is now playing an online game is actually facing a team of experts whose entire job is to design the game that will make the player addicted. And the new challenge for parents is to be able to help their child avoid his/her addiction to the screen.
Furthermore, One of the reasons to buy a child the first phone, is when he starts to be independent and comes home from school on his own or goes to class. Today, the parent must be updated at all times about their child’s location. But it turns out that the children’s phone has a special feature, the communication only works in one direction. When the child calls you, you can talk to him but when you try to call him in most cases it will not work.
How and why your idea was born?
Cohen: In 2008 when I did the MBO, we decided to focus on the consumer market and develop an online solution for child safety, a story about a 13-year-old boy in the US who committed suicide was published. After two days, his father opened his son’s personal computer to understand what his son was doing during all the time he was in front of the computer. He opened the ICQ software and then he realized that a few months before the incident, his classmates of his son, decided that his son was gay, and started harassing him. And the father was shocked and says “How could I not know what was happening to my son, at my house, where he was supposed to be the safest in the world?”.
We realized that we needed to address this need and build tools for parents that could get indications of what was happening to their children on the digital platforms to allow parents to be involved in their children’s digital world.
do you have children? Do you personally use the app?
Cohen: I have four children today: Eli, Mika, Noya, and Alma. Alma is eight years old and still does not have a phone, so the service is not working on her yet. Eli is almost 17 years old, and we stopped monitoring his activities. But Mika and Noya have phones and my wife and I use the service so that we can also be involved in their online activities: guide, educate and sometimes even help in situations in the digital world.
How should parents explain and mediate to children the dangers of the digital world?
Cohen: I always give as an example the “road” as an analogy. Roads have many benefits and are essential to us in life. But they are also a danger. We parents can not get rid of the danger on the road, so we educate our children to behave safely on the road. The same analogy is in the digital world, it has dangers, that we can not hide from our children, and we need to teach them how to behave in this complex world. And for us to guide/educate / protect, it is necessary to know what is happening to them there.
What are the tools that parents have in dealing with these challenges and what innovations your company offers them?
Cohen: With our Surfie service, we provide 4 practical tools, enabling parents to overcome the new challenges of digital parenting:
- Social media protection – Our service monitors all children’s correspondence on social platforms: WhatsApp, Instagram, Tiktok, etc., and by using our smart engine can detect events that require parental involvement. In that case, send a push notification to parents to let them know. Providing an automated tool that constantly scans the messages on social platforms, and reveals to the parents only the suspicious message, it is also possible to maintain certain privacy of the child by not exposing all the messages to the parent.
- Content Filtering – Provide a service of blocking inappropriate content adapted to the age of the child. The service is based on ACR technology, which is able to categorize a site based on its content and not just its domain address.
- Where is my Kids and Geofence notification – Provide the child’s location and their location history during the day. Sending a check-in / check-out push notification for specific places like home, school and etc.
- Screen time – Track the child’s screen time on all the devices he uses phone, tablet, and computer. Enabling blocking and restricting use by applications. Activation “mommy time” – Disables all children’s devices by the parent for a specified period of time.
Behind the scenes
what are the technical aspects with which you operate the product, And in what way the end-user will use it?
Cohen: We provide two types of applications in our service: a patent application, which the parent installs on his device as soon as he joins the service. In this app, he will define the profiles of each child and will be able to see a summary of his child’s online activities. And to get alerts about events that require his involvement. And a child application, which the parent will install on the child’s devices. This app will monitor the children’s activities and enforce the policy set by the parent.
Are there companies in Israel and around the world that provide similar services?
Cohen: Our market got a lot of attention lately, especially after Covid 19 hit us and screen addiction & Cyberbullying raise significantly. All the Parental control companies use first-generation filters on web content or block & limit Apps even google & Apple release their own version of a tool for digital parenting.
Our pioneer solution use AI and ML to identify social media inappropriate child activities and alert parent about those cases, also we develop an HTML module that can read web pages and classify web pages according to child age by using AI those AI and ML technologies. Those technologies make us a unicorn in this field and trigger the insurance market.
The insurance connection
the vision: How digital parenting tools will fit into insurance policies?
Cohen: Traditional Home insurance protects only the physical world since our world is changing, we need to adjust the cover to the dangers in front of us, and in time more and more of our assets become digital, especially after the covid-19 revolution.
In our home, there is new treats that can harm your family on social media digital world and parent have more awareness about Social media risks ( Boycott, Cyberbullying, Screentime Addiction, Suicide, Dangers Online Trends ,Ransome , Pedophilia ,Self-Image ,Adult content ,Drugs)is only a part of the new online risk that our children exposed at those days.
The online child safety service protects your family every day, in the Digital home environment, detects events that require parent involvement, and makes a parent more aware of the ability to manage their child’s digital activities (who he speaks with? If someone bothers him? What are his favorite web sites? Is he suffer from cyberbullying)?
We provide a protection platform and make sure that your family’s digital environment is safe & secure.
in what way the insurance companies may benefit from your product?
Cohen: The insurance will benefit by reducing churn for retention customers, increasing sales and helping parents with practical daily tools for digital parenting that parents will use on a daily basis.
House insurance is an annual perches, retention & Sales are fighting for every client since it is hard to differentiate the policy from the competition.
If the retention or the sales won’t bring the client value that deals with his current treats the churn rate will raise and the retention will lose to the competition.
We provide the Insurance as a gateway to a new market that is raising and becoming a major threat, also since we are pioneers in our safety solutions we can bring also brand awareness to the insurance company by providing the insurance company tools that their client will use on a daily basis, and increase the stickiness.
in what way the end user of the insurer may benefit from your product?
Cohen: Most of the insurance covers are not tangible and people usually pay to buy trust.
Our solution is composed form a system that provides practical tools for a family to manage their child’s digital world. The tools that our service provides to the parent are:
Social media protection – Raise a flag to parents on daily events that require parent involvement such as Cyberbullying, suicide, Ransome, Drugs, Self-starvation, Pedophilia, and more…
Where is my child – Get check in\Check out when the child arrives at school or see the child’s location history.
Control screentime and prevent screen addiction – manage your child’s digital usage block and limit applications for all child devices.
Filter inappropriate content and classify web pages according to child age policy
WE support android/ IOS and Pc and can protect all house devices.
in the present days, do you have collaborations with insurers?
Cohen: As a result of Covid-19 epidemic, there are new insurance covers related to cyber treads marketed to the consumer market. In the last 18 months, we were approached by multiple new projects from the insurance market that want to cooperate their services with our advanced technologies.
Those initiative projects lead to this cooperation with InsureTech in order to build a new channel for us in the insurance market.
please share with our readers about the collaboration with Kobi Bendalak.
Cohen: Working with Kobi Bendalak helps us adjust our offering to the insurance market and understand the challenges insurance companies have with customer retention on renewable home policies.
By adding that digital protection, the insurance will be able to prove a day-to-day value for the family segment, create a market advantage that will attract more families, reduce the churn for active customers and increase brand awareness about the digital challenges.
The value that we bring to the market help insurance companies with a service that will help them preserve their customers and increase retention rate dramatically.
We do believe that Kobi Bendalak is the right person to work with him on the strategy of how to penetrate the insurance market.
Are there insurance companies in Israel and abroad that provide similar services?
Cohen: In the last year, we see more and more companies that offer cyber security covers and provide compensation for a digital cyberbullying attack that requires treatments but no one offers a service that had the ability to detect and prevent dangers ahead of time. We believe the online child safety services will become a standard cover in home insurance policies and provide a significate value for families around the globe.
