Background
In our reports on SmartPhone security for youth, as well as in our general security best practices for your home, we cite content and device control as major tools that can be leveraged to protect children against many online threats. In this tool review article, we are taking a look at two of the most popular and highly rated content control products available for SmartPhones: Bark and Qustodio. We have mentioned both of these in our articles as options parents can leverage as part of a layered approach to shepherding children online, and here we provide you pros and cons as well as our own general opinions and recommendations.
To perform this review, Practive Security subscribed to the “free” introductory service offered by Bark and Qustodio, and installed the child and parent apps on iPhone devices. This is largely due to the fact that we do not recommend Android use of any kind, and found that iPhone testing provided us with sufficient understanding of the nature and capabilities of these solutions. No other operating systems or mobile platforms were tested though they are supported by both companies. Practive Security also spent extensive time reviewing online documentation and supporting articles, reading FAQs, setup guides, and private reviews.
Bottom Line Up Front
In addition to the on-device features, Bark and Qustodio offer a lot of off-device support for parents. From helpful articles, to templates for communicating with kids, to active alerts, overall they seem to be very focused on enabling parents with knowledge, awareness, and advice related to online threats and potential harm. In this way at Practive Security, we regard them as allies in this fight for our children.
Both services provide parents with regular summaries of activities and alerts when issues are detected. This keeps parents informed of activity with the opportunity to intervene and coach children as-needed. This fosters engagement by parents in technology use which is a good thing all around.
Both Bark and Qustodio seem to be designed primarily for screen time management, monitoring what your children are doing / accessing online (especially social media use), monitoring the location of your child’s phone, and monitoring native SMS message apps and call records.
Bark collects information from the local device by routing communications from the device through a VPN tunnel managed by Bark. For iOS monitoring, Bark requires the installation of their app on a desktop / laptop computer that is on the same wifi network as the mobile device you want to monitor.
Qustodio works by using the Mobile Device Management (MDM) function often used by enterprises to control device configurations, app use, and to monitor use of employee smartphones. This prioritizes control over what is on the device, but not necessarily how those apps are used.
Bark has a very limited scope of what apps and communications it can monitor, but it does seem to support the most popular email and social media providers as well as gaming and entertainment apps. To get the most out of App you basically need to use the native apps and communication tools that come with the Smartphone.
For the online apps that do not store information locally, Bark requires the child’s username and password for the online services so they can monitor them directly.
Both Bark and Qustodio can be uninstalled or disabled on the child’s device by them very easily, bypassing all controls and parental visibility, though both did generate an alert that was sent to the parent informing them of this.
While they may provide an additional layer of helpful capabilities, neither Bark nor Qustodio can be trusted to keep your children safe, as both have ways they can be easily bypassed.
Overall in our opinion of the two, Qustodio does come out on top of Bark in terms of capabilities, ease of use, and product architecture, although it has a major weakness that parents must control for.
Public Reviews
Additionally, in the Apple App Store, the Bark child’s app has a rating of 1 star out of 5, and Qustodio has a rating of 2 out of 5 stars. Both Apps for parents have much higher ratings and both among thousands of reviews.
Full Review
From here we will dive into a full review including use cases for each product, their architecture and how they work, our review of the pros and cons, and our final recommendations.
