The Philadelphia based start-up’s technology brings new protection to younger gamers and the first of its kind insight to parents.
Philadelphia, PA, November, 2021 – Kidas, the leading technology provider of parent-centered child cyberbullying gaming detection software, today announced its Kidas child PC-based protection platform ProtectMe™. Kidas is developing a suite of protection tools and a parent knowledge community hub to educate parents and protect children from online dangers.
Children, tweens, and teens have been quickly forced online for all aspects of their lives with severely limited cyber protection in gaming and are increasingly suffering from harassment. Additionally, the pandemic ignited a period of exceptional growth for the gaming sector leaving these gamers more exposed to the dangers that come with multiplayer gaming. With the advent of the developing Metaverse this problem will only increase.
“With more children being pushed online, parents are demanding the most technically advanced online software to protect their children. By utilizing the most advanced AI technology, parents can finally feel confident that their children can play in a safe metaverse environment,” said Ron Kerbs, Founder and CEO of Kidas.
The Kidas platform’s unique learning capability means it gets smarter as it encounters new ways children are being attacked whether it be by new word types, phrases, dangerous trends, hate speech or even financial scams. As these are encountered, ProtectMe™ recognizes contextual patterns over time and alerts parents with weekly notifications and guidance. ProtectMe™ goes beyond keyword recognition to understand words in context.
Kidas currently analyzes communication within over 80 of the most popular games such as Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite with more added weekly and supports communication apps, such as Discord, that are used for social gaming.
ProtectMe™ offers many benefits to parents:
- Parents are empowered – Kidas’ weekly report empowers parents by providing them with insight and an understanding of risks and threats their children face in online gaming.
- Parents learn how to keep their kids safe while gaming – Kidas’ novel context understanding algorithm securely identifies instances of cyberbullying, predation, and toxic gaming behavior parents wouldn’t otherwise know about allowing them to intervene and keep their children safe.
- Parents are at peace with their child’s gaming – Parents feel a sense of peace knowing that they are gaining all the insights they need to allow their children to play games they otherwise wouldn’t feel comfortable with.
- Parents get expert notifications and guidance – With every notification parents receive in their child’s weekly report, they are also provided with resources and recommendations from Kidas’ team of researchers and bullying experts on how to deal with the threat the child has been exposed to.
- Parents feel comfortable discussing online safety with their children without being overbearing – With access to Kidas’ members blog and recommendations written by Kidas experts, parents are provided with all the resources they need to feel comfortable communicating with their children.
Tali Bitner, head of gaming safety at Kidas says, “As the former head researcher at the Child Online Protection Bureau, I encountered criminal and civil acts on a daily basis ranging from sexual harassment, sextortion, and privacy violations to cyberbullying, suicide ideation, and social exclusion. These threats took place in online environments against children. I worked with law enforcement and government officials around the world to find a strategy to deal with risks for children. Online gaming is one of the breeding grounds of criminal and civil acts against children. Kidas is a unique solution that provides parents with detection and protection for their children to keep them safe”.
Kidas’ AI Lead, Amit Yungman says, “What we have developed goes far beyond the limited capability of speech-to-text and keyword spotting by developing an in-house algorithm that is more accurate with the ability to understand the context of speech within in the game with our AI abilities.”
Kidas is quick and easy to install. Parents simply sign up at Kidas.net and select the monthly or annual subscription; the first month is always free. The monthly subscription is $6/month and the annual subscription is $60/year. With a few simple clicks and authorization to connect to your child’s Roblox account, the install process is short and simple.
Rob Seaver, founder and former CEO of Vivox, (Vivox offers managed communication services in the form of integrated voice chat, Instant Messaging to online games, virtual worlds and other online communities) says “Safer communication makes games more immersive, interactive, and engaging. Bad behavior, bullying, abuse, etc. detracts from the enjoyment. Kidas fixes this.”
Founder and Executive Chairman of APCO Worldwide, (the world’s oldest and largest organization of public safety communications professionals), Margery Kraus says, “I am proud to partner with Ron and the team at Kidas. I believe their technology is the most powerful in building safer online communities for our children.”
“The team at Kidas has built an excellent solution to a very challenging problem,” said Bharath Madhusudan, Co-Founder and CEO of Securly (Securly is the first and only provider dedicated to bringing enterprise security to K-12) “Kidas has assembled the most technically capable team in the world to best solve the cyber bullying epidemic problem.”
About Kidas
Kidas started with the realization that while most players enjoy the social aspect of gaming, younger players and their parents rarely know how to manage the inherent risks of online anonymity. With this lack of knowledge, they are vulnerable to threats like cyberbullying and online predators. CEO Ron Kerbs, a former developer of threat detection solutions and an avid gamer himself, decided to solve this problem by applying advanced technology to video games making the experience safer for the youngest of gamers. Kidas’ mission is to create the ultimate front-line defense for kids and parents in managing the growing risks of online toxic activity. Parents subscribe to Kidas’ service monthly or annually. Once they have subscribed, they download the Kidas software to the PC that the child plays video games on. The software analyzes in-game voice and text activity for language and behavior aligned with bullying, threats, and predation. Custom weekly reports are generated and emailed to parents letting them know if their child came in contact with such threats. For more information, visit www.getkidas.com.