KidoKey: Safe Wi-Fi For The Kids


KidoKey

Internet safety is something that many parents take for granted, but wish was easier to maintain. Toronto startup  Ciboulette is looking to change that with Kidokey.

Kidokey is a Wi-Fi box that plans to empower kids to explore the Internet safely and without distraction. It will let you decide when your kids can have Internet access, what sites they can browse and what apps they can use.

Kidokey doesn’t require a complicated setup, as simply plugging it into your home router  creates a second wi-fi network for your kids.

The screening process for websites is completed by real people from Kidokey, not a computer program. Kidokey will launch with hundreds of thousands of sites already reviewed by their team, with the ability of adding/removing sites as you wish.

If this Kidokey sounds intriguing to your ultimate goals of child safety, you can pre-order one once their KickStarter goes live in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can sign up for their newsletter to keep yourself informed.

Update: Kidokey’s Kickstarter is now live. You can also read a bit of the background story behind how Kidokey came to be.

My name is Laurent, I’m a software engineer and entrepreneur. I have two sons, Tangui and Titouan, now 15 and 13. You can see a picture of them below within the team. (It looks like they smile but the reality is they show the same missing tooth.)

A few years ago, when they got their own computers, I worked hard to engage the operating system’s parental control. It was just two computers to maintain, and it was just bearable. But when they got additional devices (iPods, iPads, etc.) things got messy and I started to look for Wi-Fi routers that had some sort of filtering. I found nothing satisfying. The user experience was terrible at best and updating the list of sites was always a tedious process. So, I modified a Wi-Fi router for them.

Life went on and I quickly realized that I wasn’t the only one to encounter these issues. The multiplication of devices was making it harder and harder on parents all around me. My entrepreneurial spirit kicked in (it’s not my first company) and I started work full-time on Kidokey with two goals: ease of use (for both parents and kids) and safety.