A kid that commits suicide because of intense bullying at school or videos that go viral of children getting beat up by other children you see or hear these kind of stories very often now a days. With the coming of the internet bullying does not stop when school is over, is goes on and on via the internet and all the communication possibilities that come with it.
The Childrens’ Internet Protection Act tries to prevent these kind of things by preventing students to access harmful or obscene content online, which could result in this extreme behavior.
The startup Securly is supporting this Act by investing in new tools that can detect when children are putting harmful content online, kids that are struggling with suicidal thoughts or kids trying to harm other children. The startup is using machine learning, to determine if a kid is just browsing on the internet for certain information or is really engaging in the before mentioned extreme behavior, based on natural language processing and emotional learning. If Securly detects any of these activities it will alert parent by text so that they can take action.
The information a parent can get about their child’s internet behavior can vary with age. But for now Securly is selling its software only to schools directly. If a school is interested a IT administrator can get a special IP address from Securly and then put it into a DNS server field in their system, and within 15 minutes the school’s browsing activity is protected by the web filter created by Securly.
The next focus is on creating a ‘’Home’’ version for parents that want to look after their child’s internet behavior, and their current business model of selling their software to school districts has huge potential because students all over the world can be in need of this protection. And let’s face it, every parent would like their child to be protected from these kinds of events.
