Privacy-Enhanced Parenting Mediation System "ProKids" Providing Age-Appropriate Content with X.509 Certificate Age Rating

Abstract

It is desirable that children access the Internet for playing and learning, however, increasing inappropriate content poses various threats to children. Such threats do not just include security and privacy risks but also risks of long-term mental and physical harm. Technical mediation tools available to support parents in controlling and monitoring their children's online activity may not sufficiently balance recommended parenting mediation strategies. Recent legislative changes related to children's online security and privacy have caused the industry to implement new solutions, but these are weak in data privacy. We propose a parenting mediation tool, designed with privacy, age ratings, and Teen Online Safety Strategies (TOSS) using the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach. The design includes stakeholders in children's digital ecosystem as main actors (i.e., government/governance authorities, content providers, parents/guardians and children), and it utilizes the X.509 certificate extension field to represent the age-rating of the content. The tool authorizes the websites by verifying the X.509 certificates to provide age-appropriate content to children. ProKids offers data privacy and age-appropriate content by design while offering differentiated design for younger and older children to support children's growing autonomy. ProKids was evaluated by an initial exploratory user study and a comparison analysis against existing studies and industry-provided tools. This thesis revealed that the existing tools function well in control and monitoring but are weak in privacy, do not provide consistent age-appropriate content and most do not support teen self-regulation strategies. This thesis found that more support for children in the transitional age group (of 10-12) may be beneficial. The most important values parents indicated they cared about in parental mediation tools were 1) content, 2) interaction with others, 3) privacy, 4) transition age, 5) consistent ratings, 6) education and communication, and 7) trust. Patterns of how parents mediate their children online were 1) restrictive and monitoring (when kids are young), 2) active mediation (use of communication and education), 3) neglectful with a feeling of helplessness in terms of external support and no control when kids get older. Parents liked the content rating and privacy features of ProKids and the system was very well received by parents.