No offense (well we know where this is going), but anyone saying this has no f*$%ing idea what they are talking about.
What we found in those years with IMSafer and later with the company that purchased our assets was mindblowing in a terrible way.
In the US we weren't allowed to really do anything with the data we found even in the most awful cases. When the patriot act was in affect there were opportunities to turn some of the data over to the gov agencies that deal with exploited children, but it was unclear.
In the UK they were allowed to more freely use what they found to put pedophiles behind bars...which they did on more then one occasion.
In some cases it appeared that children had installed the software as a desperate cry for help against their abusive family members.
In one particular egregious case the offender was involved in group chats where he would try to normalize the behavior to his child by having other sick individuals tell her it was OK. Then, they would setup times for her to be online with them while terrible acts were perpetrated on her.
No one is acting as if this was common. But, it did happen. And we weren't selling the chat, running ads against it or in anyway trying to monetize the 'fear' or grief of our users.
A lot of people here do not have kids and don't understand how hard it is for parent's to talk their kids about all sorts of issues around sex and drugs and rebellion etc.
In many cases IMSafer was their last hope and it was very helpful to a lot of people.
We never started it because we wanted to spy on kids or know people's gossip. We did it because we realized that parents were ill equipped to deal with the new online world.
Porn was a not a concern. To us that was your child viewing something. What we were concerned with was someone coming into your child's world and talking to them without your permission. If the child was having an issue with their parent's these kind of people would pick at that and try to show the child they were on their side to win trust.
Places where parent's thought their kids should be safe just weren't and still are not.
Also, some kids are susceptible to these kind of attacks by predators. In some cases parent's had kids who had been sexually assaulted in real life already and they were very afraid, because of their child's mental makeup now, that they would make easier targets.
We had adults buying plane tickets for kids and working out details to get them to fly across the country to meet under the guise of some camp the kid was going to, etc.
It's real whether you want to deal with it or not. We did our best to balance online privacy while helping people.
I feel like we did a phenomenal job and we didn't sell fear. It was never part of our marketing or selling.