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Comment by biafra | Hacker News Reader

A tip for other parents who let their kids use their Android phones or tablets. You can lock the Play Store so a pin is needed to do purchases. This also locks in-app purchases.

Older Android Markets did not have this options so I had to learn about this the hard (expensive) way.

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There's a free app called Famigo Sandbox which will provide your kid with their own launcher with a subset of apps you've approved for their use. As well as in-app purchases, it also prevents making phone calls, sending texts, mucking about with your settings etc. and blocks ads until you unlock with a swipe pattern to get back to the full phone.

It's quite handy. I assume they make money via recommending kid focused apps to their users.

http://www.famigo.com/sandbox/

Thanks for the shout out, it's always great to hear from a happy user!

You are correct on the business model; right now, it's promotional fees from developers plus device manufacturer licensing fees.

You are also correct that we focus on a different use case than Kyte. It seems to me they're more focused on location and telephony (very worthwhile, btw!), whereas we are all about making it for kids to find and play great apps.

I was looking for family safety software for Android, so thanks for the recommendation above. I liked your password entering setup :) What is it called?

Another option is Kyte (YC winter class grads):

I've used it quite a bit, really like the product. Smart guys too!

https://www.kytephone.com/

I've not used Kyte phone but they seem like different products. Kyte is for giving a smartphone to your child to use as theirs, while Famigo is for giving your phone, temporarily, to your child. Both cool ideas, but relatively distinct use cases so they're not really interchangeable.

Thank you! I did thorough research trying to find something like that in the Android Market, and didn't think to look again after the rebranding.

Hope they work on promoting that feature more. This could reduce the number of games whose core gameplay and general UI seems modeled around trying to trick kids into purchasing something.

Thanks for mentioning that... I didn't know they had changed that.

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