Parenting in digital era is a game of nerves! With smartphones and tablets, there is a whole world that is plain hidden from the parents’ eye! The Colorado sexting scandal where many teenagers may face pornography charges for keeping and exchanging nudes on and through their cell phones has brought a new problem to the spotlight – the ghost apps!

What In The Hell Are Ghost Apps, Any Why?

Ghost apps, hidden apps or the vault apps – call it what you may fancy – but they are the bad guys that completely hide photos and videos on a phone. An app that may seemingly look as harmless as a calculator might need just a pass code to reveal all that is hidden! And most of the teenagers under the investigation in Colorado have been using these apps! So talk about what your child dos on the smartphone, these apps will totally hide nudes and inappropriate videos even if you get the access to your child smartphone!

5 Ghost Apps, Every Parent Should Know About

So if you’re a parent and losing your night’s sleep because you fear your child could land into a similar fate like the Canon City High teens, then you need to keep a close eye on your teens and what they do on their phones. Sexting is way beyond simple control. So many teens share their nudes with their friends through their phones or tabs and those pictures get forwarded to more and more teens. According to stats, 40% teens admitted to have sexted their significant other. 12% of the teens said they sexted because they were pressured to do it while 77% of them said they did so to get their significant other in the mood to have sex!

So yeah, sexting is a bigger threat to your child safety than you probably imagined but what makes sexting so easy? Well smartphones and internet make a deadly combo here and you toss these ghost apps in the mix and you get5 yourself into something pretty vicious!

These apps can totally hide photos and videos from anyone who’s not intended to see them. So your teens could be sending their nudes right under your nose! It’s naturally advised to keep an eye on such apps, but where to start from? Here are some of the most-downloaded ghost apps for Android and iOS:

1. KeepSafe Private Photo Vault

KeepSafe app makes it their business to hide photos because, “it’s no one’s business!” This app also enables a backup features so the photos of your teens will get stored on a server and this can means security glitches and photos being hacked.

2. Private Photo Vault

This app claims to be one of the top 1010 photography apps and is the 28^th most downloaded photography apps. It hides all the selected photos and videos behind a PIN so no one else can have access to the app photos.

3. Private Photo Calculator

Now this app goes one step beyond and hides itself under the gusise of a plain calculator. So if you get to have the access to your child’s phone and want to have a look at the apps installed, there is virtually no way you can find that this pap is to hide the pictures. Users need to enter the PIN in the seemingly calculator to get access to the hidden stuff!

4. Best Secret Folder

Best Secret Folder also hides photos and videos and also hides itself in the iPhone ‘My Utilities’ folder so no one can suspect private photos and videos to be stashed away in the phone.

5. Hide Something

This app claims to have up to 5,000,000 installs and also uses the same password protection like other apps. This app however is only for the Android users.

What Parents Can Do?

Well, this is a million-dollar question. Parents need to be upfront with their kids and talk the matter out with the teens. With sexting on the rise and a possibility of similar crack-downs on sexters across the US, parents need to have a significant control on what media their teens have access to.

Experts believe the best way out is to go for the digital parental control apps. These apps can let parents remotely view and control their child’s access and usage details of the smartphones. Some advanced apps like FamilyTime also let parents to view all installed apps on their child’s Android phones. And if there are any of the above mentioned ghost apps, parents can simply put these apps to the App Blacklist.

This will bar the teens from using those apps entirely. They will get a pop-up on their phones that this app has been blocked for their own safety:

FamilyTime is a free app buts also comes in a Premium version. This app is available on Google Play andiTunes and so parents can easily use the app for android monitoring.

Bust the Ghost Apps; protect Your Teens!

So, not all is lost and parents can re-gain their parental control using these iPhone and Android monitoring apps. These apps will not only make you more involved and informed about your teens and their digital lifestyle but also let you protect them against sexting, cyber bullying and online dating violence. So it’s a win-win situation!

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