Apple recently announced that it has been awarded a patent for new technology for its wildly popular iPhone. The technology, officially called “text-based communication control for personal communication device” was submitted for patent in early 2008. Apple was officially awarded the patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office as recently as yesterday.
Apple: iCensor
Officially, the technology will give the parents the opportunity to monitor the text messages their children send from their phone by blocking specific words from their texting vocabulary. Unofficially, it prevents young people from sending out text messages that may get them into trouble later. The technology has not yet been implemented on any iPhones on the market currently, but Apple promises the software will prevent the phone’s user from sending or receiving text messages with explicit language and could also send an alert to the parent’s phone that the child has attempted to send an illicit message.
The technology currently only covers explicit text, not images, but there’s always room for improvement.
How It Works
Parents set a list of words they don’t want their children to be using and the software will automatically remove the word. Parents can also use settings to force their children to use punctuation or a foreign language should they choose to do so.
Although college students today won’t be subjected to this form of censorship, for future generations, this could be the norm. If only cell phone companies could figure out a way to stop drunk-texting…
