Here’s the story of a life-saving app. I really had one of the baddest and the best experience at the same time, thanks to iKeyMonitor. Let me tell you the story
I have two sons. The youngest is only 1 year old, but the oldest is 10 years old. As I’m not really enjoying the idea of my kid having a connected smartphone, I gave him my former phone, which is a Samsung Galaxy J5 2017, so he can play games and get to see his favourite YouTube videos and cartoons replay. However, as I couldn’t set a good parental control using my provider’s service, I decided to install iKeyMonitor so I could check my son’s activity, including what YouTube videos and channels he would watch. But on the 2nd day of the free trial, something came up…
The iKeyMonitor and the EaseMon Cloud Panel were working perfectly fine. I was able to monitor my son’s activity and was happy to see he was only watching at what he was supposed to watch at. Since he’s only 10 years old, he doesn’t have any social media account. And of course, I don’t allow him to. However, on the second day monitoring my kid’s phone, I got a notification from iKeyMonitor cloud panel, telling me the phone has received a message. The thing is, my son wasn’t supposed to receive messages.
So I logged on the Cloud Panel and immediately saw he actually had a message. I read it and it was saying something like “hi I’m Clara, 12yo, what’s your name?”. I saw my son’s answer “I’m Arthur, 10 years old”. How was that possible? Then thanks to iKeyMonitor, I was able to see the messages were texts sent through a mobile phone number. My son managed to get a SIM card and configure it on the phone I gave him!
As I was away from home due to my work, I wasn’t able to intervene right away, and anyway I decided to let him sending and receiving messages to see where all of this would lead, so I’d be able to catch him and get more proofs of his behaviour.
The next day, he exchanged messages with the so called 12yo girl, including MMS in which she was sending him pics of her (non nude, hopefully). He texted her pictures as well, but his innocence made him send pictures of the cat, of his toys, of his desk, hopefully none of his face or body, despite the girl’s request. These requests were really worrying me. I immediately thought of a sexual paedophile predator. So I made screen caps directly from the IKeyMonitor Cloud Panel just in case.
As this app was really powerful, I was also able to record phone calls. And since my son now had a talker, I set the automatic call recording feature on, in case they were deciding texting was not enough.
I bought a licence to continue monitoring the messages, the app really worth it. The girl’s texts were more and more asking for personal details my son answered. Where was he living, what was he doing as leisure, sports, family, favourite cartoons, … Many topics just in a few minutes. My son was telling all the requested details. I told my boss about the problem and asked him to go back home earlier to catch my son’s phone before it’s too late.
In the train back home, I was still monitoring. I didn’t want my son to know I was monitoring him, so that’s why I didn’t call him or his mom to stop it. I wanted to sort all this out by myself. Then came a message from the girl asking my son if he would like to meet her today at the park near my house. My son was allowed to go to this park since it was close to home and quite secured, regarding the cars traffic and neighbourhoods. Appointment time was set to 3 hours later. Then the “girl” tested my son to call her when he’ll be on his way.
I was approaching home and was very nervous about all this. I wanted to catch my son before the appointment. But then I received a new notification about a call recording. She was calling him ! I listened to the record, clear sound from my son but not very clear from the caller. Anyway I listened carefully and I found this voice was not of a real little girl but mostly some grown-up who was trying to fake a kid’s voice.
I then decided to call the police, told them the whole story and the appointment details, so they could reach it on time and catch this awful guy before he sees my son. As I got back home, I ran into my son’s room and told him everything about the monitoring, catching the phone from his hands, scolding him about the danger and the SIM card he got. An hour later, police called me to ask if I got home on time and if the “girl” called again. I told them not yet. They managed to get the real name of the phone number owner and catch him before he reaches my son.
It appeared the “girl” was a 45 years old paedophile man who was trying to catch kids using a fake girl profile on social medias. He didn’t get my son’s number directly though, occurring he was sending texts to hundreds of numbers hoping to get a satisfying answer. By the time I write this story, he’s in jail and been charged for child pornography. And my son isn’t allowed to use a smartphone, a computer or a tablet anymore.
Using the powerful iKeyMonitor helped me monitoring my boy and avoid something horrible to happen. It saved his life ! I will keep using it as soon as he’ll be allowed to own a phone or a tablet.