How to track your kids using a smartphone

BARCELONA (AFP) – Is your toddler being mean to his baby sister while you’re out of the room? Is your eight-year-old making unauthorised detours to the sweetshop after school?

Mobile entrepreneurs have got your back with smartphone-controlled baby cameras and wristwatch tracking devices that let you spy on your kids via your handset.

Among the countless new “wearables” presented this week at the Mobile World Congress trade fair in Barcelona, several companies were peddling brightly-coloured rubber wristwatch devices for four to 11-year-olds.

The watches let parents track their child’s movements on the screen of their smartphone and receive alerts if the child wanders outside a pre-set “safety zone”.

Spanish phone firm Telefonica announced the launch in Europe and Latin America of the FiLIP, a wrist device that has taken off in the United States since 2013.

The watch lets the child talk via their wrist to authorised adults who have the app on their smartphone.

Other smaller companies trying to market child trackers included B-On, a multinational firm that presented a purple prototype of its Amigo child watch in Barcelona.