> I will never understand parents thinking that they somehow deserve to know every single thing their child is doing and saying beyond basic parental controls.
Parents have a responsibility to parent: at minimum, making sure that their child doesn't get into anything truly dangerous, exploitative, or criminal. This is easy to do in physical reality but quite difficult to do for online activities unless you are literally watching over the kid's shoulder. So I can easily see why a well-meaning and worried parent would be tempted to install some sort of spyware.
I can appreciate that there are some well intentioned parents looking at tools like this, however there is a massive amount of difference between built in parental control tools and tools like this one that (seemingly) gives complete access to everything.
A parent does not need to be able to read every message sent, every email, every photo, etc etc. You cannot convince me otherwise. Just like any sane parent would not put a wire on their kid so they can hear every conversation they have in person. I am sorry but when I hear a parent say "well I bought the device" or some stupid argument like that, well I hope you enjoy our kid not talking to you once they are an adult or always having an "at arms length" relationship.
Instead of taking a heavy hand and invading their child's privacy why not instead focus on education. Expose them to the dangerous parts of the internet and have conversations about it. Make your kid feel safe enough that when something does feel wrong, they can come to you without risk of judgement or punishment.
While I can agree that there are some well intentioned parents that may use a tool like this, it is the lazy option that will do more harm than good.
> A parent does not need to be able to read every message sent, every email, every photo, etc etc.
Sure - but a parent needs to be able to know the content of some non-zero fraction of the messages. (Just as in physical reality, a parent can get some gist of a child's conversations when within hearing range.) And even more important than the content, the parent wants be able to see who is sending the messages. A traditional sort of parental control which blocks "adult" (in reality - sometimes educationally useful) sites at the domain level is entirely useless for tackling the problem of creeps, crooks, and crazies sending your kid DMs in supposedly kid-appropriate games and apps.
Parents have a responsibility to parent: at minimum, making sure that their child doesn't get into anything truly dangerous, exploitative, or criminal. This is easy to do in physical reality but quite difficult to do for online activities unless you are literally watching over the kid's shoulder. So I can easily see why a well-meaning and worried parent would be tempted to install some sort of spyware.