Betrayed by the Guardian: Security and Privacy Risks of Parental Control Solutions Suzan Ali Mounir Elgharabawy Quentin Duchaussoy
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Concordia University Concordia University Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada Montreal, Quebec, Canada Montreal, Quebec, Canada Mohammad Mannan Amr Youssef
[email protected] [email protected] Concordia University Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada Montreal, Quebec, Canada ABSTRACT Conference (ACSAC 2020), December 7–11, 2020, Austin, USA. ACM, New For parents of young children and adolescents, the digital age has in- York, NY, USA, 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3427228.3427287 troduced many new challenges, including excessive screen time, in- appropriate online content, cyber predators, and cyberbullying. To address these challenges, many parents rely on numerous parental 1 INTRODUCTION control solutions on diferent platforms, including parental con- Many of today’s children cannot imagine their daily lives without trol network devices (e.g., WiFi routers) and software applications internet. A recent survey [66] shows that 42% of US children (4–14 on mobile devices and laptops. While these parental control solu- years) spend over 30 hours a week on their phones; nearly 70% of tions may help digital parenting, they may also introduce serious parents think that such use has a positive efect on their children’s security and privacy risks to children and parents, due to their development [66]. While the web could be an excellent environment elevated privileges and having access to a signifcant amount of for learning and socializing, there is also a plethora of online content privacy-sensitive data.