See https://youtu.be/CbRNTU1swZg

How Safe Mode Bypasses Parental Control Apps (And How We Detect It)

Introduction to Safe Mode

Today we will be discussing safe mode on Android and the problems that it poses for parental control and accountability apps, and how it can be detected by our products. I believe we are the only ones that detect all of the ways to access safe mode.

Safe Mode Background

So safe mode, first a little bit of background. Safe mode is a diagnostic tool. It's intended to be used by people trying to fix a phone where, say, there's a situation where you were using your phone and you installed an app, and that app had a bug or it was a malicious app, or something was wrong with the app that caused the phone itself to malfunction.

Android and iPhone try to protect against this, but sometimes it does still happen. So what you can do is you can turn on safe mode. What safe mode does is it disables all of your apps that you downloaded or installed yourself. So the only apps that can be used are the apps that came pre-installed on the phone.

Now, the problem there is Chrome came pre-installed on the phone. Your messages app came pre-installed on the phone. There's a handful of different apps that came pre-installed on the phone that can all be used in safe mode, but your parental control or your accountability app cannot, because it did not come pre-installed on your phone. So that's the problem.

Our products—Triple Screen Kin and Best Accountability—detect safe mode, and they detect all ways of accessing it. Most companies out there will either not detect it at all, or they'll only detect one of the predominantly two ways, because the second way is a lot trickier. We'll get into why that is.

First Method Demonstration

First, let me show you these two different techniques. There are two different ways to get into safe mode. The easiest way to detect safe mode—and the way that some apps detect it—is if you long press on the power button. There are some companies out there that will detect this. Our products do detect it and alert when it's accessed. You just push okay and that's going to restart the phone, and when the phone restarts it will be put into safe mode. You can tell because there's normally a little message at the bottom that says "safe mode" somewhere.

So that's the first method. That's the easiest method to detect. It's also the easiest method to use to access safe mode.

Second Method Demonstration

Now there is a second method. If you want to stay blissfully ignorant, don't continue watching. But our product does handle this second method—it does detect and alert when it's used. I'm going to go ahead and share how it's accessed because I think it's important that you are educated and aware that this method exists, and that as far as we are aware, no other parental control or accountability app out there detects it.

First you need to shut the phone off. Let me go ahead and log in, and then I'm going to power off the phone. It is shutting down.

Now that the phone is powered off, to get into safe mode, you turn the phone on and then you push the volume key—some combination of the volume button. It can change depending on the phone manufacturer, but normally it's the volume down button. Now if you look in the bottom left corner, you'll see it's cut off a little bit because the screen is not a perfect rectangle. You're now in "repair guy mode," if that makes sense. This safe mode is not designed for normal people to use—it's designed for technicians to use. So things like this don't get polished out of it. But basically, that's a cut-off "S." So we are in safe mode now.

Now I'm going to go ahead and log into the phone. At this point, you can see we are in safe mode. These apps are examples of apps that cannot be used—they're considered third-party apps. But all of these other apps that aren't grayed out, they can still be used. Now, if you install an app, that app is third-party—it can't be used. But when you're in safe mode, Chrome can be used, and all of these different apps can still be used.

That is why safe mode is such a problem—because it basically can be used to get around most parental control and accountability apps.

How Our App Detects It

So how does our app handle it, since our app isn't able to run in safe mode either? Essentially, what our app is able to do is it's able to look back and detect that safe mode was used. To exit safe mode, you just restart the phone. That's what I did.

Now I am logged back into the device, and a safe mode alert will have been sent. If you open up the Drupal app, you'll see there are tamper alerts. You can see here that the menu for rebooting the phone into safe mode was detected—that is one of the tamper alerts. And then you'll notice right here, we've got this alert that says "safe mode may have been used. Evidence indicates it was used from May 15th at 1:26 p.m. to May 15th at 1:37 p.m." That was my original test.

Essentially, this is our look-back feature. If you access safe mode using that tricky method where you turn the phone off and then push the volume key, this is what the safe mode tamper alert will look like. It tells you when it was used and it indicates that—while our product is not able to monitor when safe mode is used—we are able to monitor that safe mode was used and alert you to that fact.

Company Philosophy

If you are looking for bulletproof parental control or accountability apps, I don't believe there are any other products out there that detect that second access point for safe mode. We are the only one. I assume the reason for that is because these other companies don't go into the details quite as much as we do.

We spend a lot of time and effort on research and development. There's a reason why we were the first of any company to offer screenshot accountability. There's a reason why we're the first of any company to offer [these features]—it's because we care very deeply about the product.

We care about how bulletproof the product is. We care very much about how well the product works. Both Josh and I find a great sense of satisfaction when the product works well, and that is kind of our driving focus. The whole point here is we wanted to build the product that we want for ourselves and for our families.

I can't speak for other apps, but what I've found is they will kind of copy the features that on the surface are easy to compare. I know we were the first to launch screenshot accountability, and then within 3 to 4 years, some competitors had launched some similar element of it. But they're normally cheap or shallow copies, I guess is what I would call it, because they don't do the level of research that we do.

So if you are looking for bulletproof accountability or parental control apps, you will not find one that's more bulletproof than ours. We detect things that no other products detect, and we alert you to it.

Product Offerings

If you are looking to sign up, the links are in the description below the video. We've got ScreenKin, which is our parental control product, and Best Accountability, which is our accountability app product that helps individuals and adults overcome addictions to bad or negative online behavior like viewing pornography or gambling or things of that nature. It's predominantly for helping with pornography, but we hope to help with any sort of online addiction.

Thank you so much for watching. Hopefully this video was at least educational for you. Stay safe out there, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out.