Apple came out and said MDM was not a suitable way to do parental device control and could pose a security risk, which killed apps like OurPact.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/apple-is-nixing-iphone-pare...

Was it meant to promote ScreenTime? Perhaps. But ScreenTime is another iOS feature that was highly touted at first and then became a neglected unusable mess in the years since.

Honestly, I don't blame the guy for setting up a signal jammer because the whole cat-and-mouse game you play with teens is fucking exhausting.

My parents simply chose to not have internet. We used an old WRT router to boost the neighbors wifi, cracked it, and then had free internet. They had no idea.

My dad would take the modem with him to work, and when he was at home using the internet he would turn it on, wait for it to boot, load a web page, and then turn it back off until he needed to load another webpage. That was the only way he actually stopped me from getting to the internet, but it was a too much effort and he didn't keep it up for long.

Statute of Limitations, but...

A "friend's" parents chose to go without a phone. My "friend" realizing how simple the old phone systems were rewired the second line of "his" parents' house to the line of a neighbor from a near by junction between houses. "He" would have to quietly pick up the phone to see if the line was free, and quietly hang up if not to try later. It worked well for a period of time until "he" forgot to unplug the phone before leaving. "His" parents were quite surprised when the phone in "his" room started ringing.

Oh man. I too have a "friend" with a similar story. Except my friend was connected to a pay phone line at a nearby store and managed to route the line all the way into his bedroom via existing unused pairs along the way. All so that he could dial into long-distance BBSes. (Because there were none locally.)

Eventually the phone company caught on and probably _could_ have charged my friend with theft of services or something, but instead just disconnected the rogue line and put a lock on the payphone interface box and placed a large "property of the telco" sticker on it. Probably dodged a significant bullet there, in retrospect.

I would be proud of my kid if they did that. I would ground them, but proudly.

Speaking of pushing boundaries. Parents in the generation had to get a physical box with a padlock in which the phone was placed. You could still pick up the handle to answer a call but you couldn't reach the dial. Some figured out how to tap dial but I never did.

If it's possible for a parent to set up MDM in a way that a child can't remove, then what's stopping a domestic abuser from setting up MDM in a way the victim can't remove?

Nothing is stopping that from happening and there are many many apps that give you very granular control and reporting on phones, sometimes in very sneaky ways.

The police. If you're an adult and someone messed with your phone, you have [or should have] a case under CFAA or some similar law. It's basically a blinking neon sign that says "abusive partner".

A simplified comparison: if it's possible for a parent to take away a kid's phone, what prevents a domestic abuser from taking away their victim's phone?

> The police. If you're an adult and someone messed with your phone, you have [or should have] a case under CFAA or some similar law. It's basically a blinking neon sign that says "abusive partner".

If "just go to the police" were an option for all domestic abuse victims, I'd expect that there'd already be plenty of other blinking neon signs they could point to.

> A simplified comparison: if it's possible for a parent to take away a kid's phone, what prevents a domestic abuser from taking away their victim's phone?

The difference is that the phone doesn't sprout legs and run away from the victim, or otherwise assist the abuser in taking it away.

>If "just go to the police" were an option for all domestic abuse victims, I'd expect that there'd already be plenty of other blinking neon signs they could point to.

Not really. Proving domestic abuse is not easy. It's mostly "he said, she said" until somebody ends up in the ER. That's why restraining orders are so common, because the evidence available won't lead to a conviction, but the legal system still wants to provide some kind of protection to victims, even though the protection afforded by a restraining order isn't that reliable. A big limitation for victims in going to the police is that if there isn't evidence to convict, the system does not effectively protect them from retaliation.

Now, on the other hand, if you can produce a device with some software illegally installed on it, you've got physical evidence that can be presented in front of a jury leading to a felony conviction. It's easily more reliable than most evidence used to prove abuse, which tends to be testimonial.

A remarkably high proportion of abusers walk away even when the police have been involved, cf Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito. So no, there are not plenty of blinking neon signs. There are almost never blinking neon signs.

>The difference is that the phone doesn't sprout legs and run away from the victim, or otherwise assist the abuser in taking it away.

This is trivial and irrelevant.