CHENNAI: These days, children don’t use phones to just play games; they have all the knowledge about mobile apps at their fingertips, quite literally. However with increasing dangers online, parents are advised to be wary of apps that could affect the safety of their children.
Alerting parents of a similar situation, a message has been going viral on WhatsApp warning parents about an app called ‘Talking Angela’. The exact words of the message are: “Warning: To all parents with children who have electronics devices such as iPads, tablets etc there is an app called Talking Angela that asks children their names and address, the school they study in and other details...” The message goes on to tell the reader that the information is then used by kidnappers and rapists to track down the child.
However, like thousands of other messages that go viral on the Internet, this one too is a false alarm. The app, is another venture from Outfit7, a reputed company with an office and a verified website, the team also came up with the widely popular ‘Talking Tom’ app, that’s a hit among both adults and children. The ‘Talking Angela’ app is almost exactly similar – both feature a cat that repeats everything that the customer says to it.
How is it that ‘Talking Angela’ is not dangerous? The fact that the character in the app is a virtual cartoon is one of the reasons. Besides, the app does ask a few questions after an immediate download but none of the questions are invasive.
The app also has a child mode, which parents can choose to switch to. When it’s switched on, the app does not ask the child any questions and the text-chat feature is also turned off. However, since the child mode button is easy to switch on, it’s also that much easier to turn it off. The only thing a child can do is to get the cat to repeat the words that are spoken, stroke and poke the cartoon, to see animated responses.
The warning message also claims that the camera mode of the app captures images of the children and transports it to ‘kidnappers’. While the app does have a camera, it is only used by children to make the cat repeat their facial expressions and does not actually capture the image. Since, it is an app used by billions across the globe, parents can be sure their children are not in danger. But nevertheless, such a message can alert parents about other apps in the market.