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TeenSafe has a rating of 2.1 stars from 131 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally dissatisfied with their purchases. Reviewers complaining about TeenSafe most frequently mention customer service, free trial, and credit card problems. TeenSafe ranks 114th among Parenting sites.
I work with several parents who use this website to monitor their children's smart phone behavior. They love the functionality and all report it provides exactly what they promise. Sounds like a solid monthly investment for parents concerned about their children's online/cellular activities.
Its like your bothering them, horrible attitudes long wait times and for me 4 hours later nothing is fixed. I can check on a computer through the website what my child is doing but was never able to get the app to work...
The idea behind Teensafe is an excellent one and I'm disappointed that it doesn't live up to its promises. I tried the software on three separate occasions months apart. I gave each try about a weeks time but all three times it failed to provide deleted texts or deleted web history, and most of the time it took too much effort to acquire any data at all. I tested this out several times by sending and receiving a text on my child's phone, then deleting it. It never showed up under deleted texts. This app does nothing more than what you can accomplish in random phone inspections.
Next, my daughter's Apple account is requiring a new password every time I hit "Get the Latest Data" because it's locking her out and resetting her password as if someone is trying too many times to access her account. If I didn't want her to know I was monitoring her phone, how could I explain that every day she has to reset her Apple password?
Sadly, Teensafe is unable to do the job it promises and I suggest not wasting your time with it.
YOU WILL BE CHARGED JUST FOR SIGNING UP! They offer a "free" trial, however, if you don't have the information in order to get into your child's phone, THEY CHARGE YOU ANYWAY! Business hours are limited, and they treat you like you did something wrong.
Greetings Mary,
Our apologies that you spent valuable time and weren’t successful in the trial setting up your child’s phone. I’m certain that we can issue a refund if you contact me with your email. Our U.S.-based customer support team works hard to resolve all customer issues so would appreciate you sending us an email so we can look into this for you. Ruth.doering@teensafe.com
I tried the app under the Free for 7 days to see if if was something I would find helpful to keep an eye on my 4 kids and their cyber communication. The trial shows two texts per conversation so I upgraded to the full account a few days after getting the app only to find that in some cases two texts was all you were going to get. The deleted texts is a joke. They make no logical sense. The full account was useless and a complete waste of money. I requested a refund because I feel they didn't provide what they advertised and all I got was a string of replies saying their contract says no refunds so too bad. They also cancelled my account and gave me instructions on what to do if I wanted to reopen it and use the rest of the month I paid for. So they cancelled the account that I paid for and made me do additional work to reactivate it but would give a refund. This app is a joke and worthless. They trick you into upgrading to "see" more but it's just as useless. Stay away, it may only be $15 but you can spend that better on a few starbucks coffees! Save your money and pass on this one.
Never worked as promised, and forced me to change my AppleID password every day, which required changing it in settings on all our phones, iPads, AppleTVs and iMacs. Huge pain in the rear. I hate TeenSafe and its creators with a deep and abiding intensity.
Greetings Jurgen,
We also are frustrated by the Apple iCloud lockout issue that is affecting all monitoring services, so understand your stance on that.
But, feel compelled to stick up for our team of hard-working, dedicated professionals and parents. Our #1 goal each morning is how to help parents keep their children safe from the many digital minefields that present themselves each week. Because what we do is very difficult our services aren’t perfect. We’re proud of the daily and weekly comments we receive internally from parents thanking us for our services.
Won't update. Constantly says "new update not allowed". Customer service unresponsive to help resolve. Does NOT show deleted texts from iPhones, only Androids. Dishonest advertising and promises.
Greetings Jenn,
This sounds infuriating and we’re sorry that this has been your experience. Our goal is to deliver the best monitoring tools parents can use to keep their tweens and teens safe.
The service we offer is technologically difficult and at times there are issues that interfere with our offering. Our team works very hard to resolve technical issues as quickly as possible. Best, the TeenSafe team
My husband and I cannot get teensafe to stop charging him for this spyware that we did not ask for and do not need. We finally put a stop pay through the bank, after their customer service failed to cancel the account. They fought the bank without bothering to simply call us and the charges started up again. We DO NOT HAVE A TEENAGER. IF WE DID, WE HAVE PLENTY OF TOOLS THROUGH OUR CARRIER THAT SURPASS SPYING ON TEXTS. Google provides a location for Android and Apple does the same for iPhone, and my carrier can do the rest if I needed them to. We cant get anything but a runaround from these people and my husband has had to shut down his debit card while he works with the bank to move into a new account. We have been dealing with this for over 2 years.
Sorry for this serious ordeal but we’re fairly certain that you have us confused with another company. Are you contacting (800)245-8598 or emailing support@teensafe.com? Our customer support team routinely cancels accounts without any issues. Also, TeenSafe is exclusively for parents of children under 18 years old. Monitoring any person 18 years or older, or anyone for whom you are not the legal guardian or parent, violates our Terms of Use. Please contact me if your account is with TeenSafe.com Ruth.Doering@TeenSafe.com and we will resolve immediately.
So the app claims to be able to recover deleted text messages... This is from thier support:
"Thank you for contacting KidBridge Customer Support.
If the teens is deleting the messages while away from the home those message will not pick up in a backup. The only messages that will be retrieved will be if they are deleted while in the home under the same WiFi connection as the computer the program is installed on."
I don't know about you, but my kid doesn't wait until he gets home to delete messages. If you cant recover all the messages, don't make the blanket statement that you can. This is on thier website:
"SMS & Deleted Messages
Gain constant access to your child's SMS, iMessages, and deleted messages."
I tried for weeks to get a single connection to get the device's back ( been in IT for almost 20 years), and the process was just horrible to follow, and to work consistently.
Save your time, and money and find another service. Ever since Teensafe became Kidbridge, it went downhill.
I life Teen Safe overall. I have a teen with bipolar disorder so it is important for me to monitor what she is up to from time to time for her own protection just in case she is getting ready to engage in some risky behaviors. The only downside is every now and then you will have a period of an hour or two delay and that could be critical in certain situations. I find that AT&T Family Maps is way more accurate on location but Teen Safe will provide a general location for you. The only real downside is if your child is using a third party texting app like TextNow or another that is not built into the phone, you will NOT see those messages. One very positive policy that Teen Safe has that other Parental "spy" apps do not have is that you cannot see Snapchat photos or pics sent in MMS messages for a reason. Think about it... if another child sent your child a sexting photo, even though you don't want your child doing that, would you want to see it? Of course not! Or would you want another adult seeing a pic if you child sent a sexting photo? It is for the protection of the kids involved who make bad choices and I applaud them for not allowing pics to be seen by adults. Overall I give this app 4 out of 5 stars. I have used it for two of my kids, android and iPhone, and I think it is worth the $14.95 a month.
Do you have an extra 10+ hours you don't need? Still trying to install this thing and have now given up. Yes, I am trying the migrated version of kidbridge.
This is a service that, if used properly, can be such a useful resource for child safety. I was shocked at some of the naive mistakes my son was making online. Remember, it's not always your child but who influences them. You will have the ability to read deleted texts. While it's true, you can't always get proper contact name and every single deleted message (just the shredding of iCloud data then piecing back together) you get enough information to know what's going on.
You can't access photo or videos. If you want to access Snapshat use MSpy as a separate tool. This, for me, is the biggest downfall. The other would be missing some of the deleted messages although I understand how this happens thru iCloud.
I notice some of you are saying they aren't giving money back if cancelled or customer service is faulty. I must say, I've never had that problem. It's something to download on your desktop or laptop in my opinion. You can always send customer service an email and they respond quickly. Also during normal business goes they're always available to Chat w you right then. Try those avenues if you are having trouble.
Former teacher and mother
1. Problem CAN NOT BE FIXED. STOP TELLING CUSTOMER YOU ARE WORKING ON IT! JUST BE HONEST! YOU ARE A SCAM TAKING PEOPLES $ WHEN YOU KNOW THIS DOES NOT WORK! SHAME ON YOU
2. CUSTOMER SERVICE SAYS SAME THIS AS EMAIL, SO NO HELP. YOU OFFER A SERVICE YOU CAN NOT PROVIDE, THEN YOU BLAME IT ON THE PHONE SERVICE OR CUSTOMER!
She-Rie J and Zhazha S
TeenSafe Customer Support Team
*******598
Monday - Friday: 8 AM - 5 PM CST
www.teensafe.com
Lucinda,
Please email me at ruth.doering@teensafe.com your email address so we can look into what happened in your case. We aren’t going to give up until we are certain that there is no way to fix the iCloud lockout issue. We’ve been able to resolve for many parents and would appreciate the opportunity to see if we can for you.
Again, we understand your frustration and are working diligently on a workaround to the changes Apple made to their software.
THEY CHARGE YOUR ACCOUNT FOR "FREE" TRIAL. All negative review true. IT WILL LOCK YOUR ICLOUD! YOU WILL NEED TO RESET EVERYDAY! NO UPDATES AS PROMISED AND THEY DONT ANSWER YOU EMAILS! HAD TO CALL BANK TO STOP PAYMENT
Tried repeatedly to load the Teensafe Control app on my childrens' devices to no avail. Was on customer service for over 2 hours and 20 minutes, trying different devices, computers, cables, rebooting everything multiple times, removing and re downloading the configurator app, the iPhone app, clearing privacy settings, and more all without any success. I would get a connection error multiple times, One time it started to work and do the preliminary iPhone backup and got to 97% after an hour of waiting only to get another connection error message. This product is useless if you cannot install it. To add insult to injury the customer support is helpless as they work off of a solutions database and when you have a "real" problem that does not fit the cookie cutter database mold they cannot help you. Then instead of transferring you on to one of their software developers who can really help you, they "escalate" the issue to the rabbit hole of Alice in Wonderland to see how deep it will go before it disappears with no further callbacks or assistance. Safe your time and money and go with a competitor
Bobby,
Very sorry your installation process was frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful. The service we offer is technologically difficult and this can be reflected in the installation process. Our goal is to deliver the best monitoring tools parents can use to keep their teens and tweens safe but at times the installation is more difficult than we’d like.
There are several issues that significantly hamper installation including the age of computer and phone, available storage space on the phone and computer and weak WiFi coverage.
Please send me (ruth.doering@teensafe.com) the email address you used to sign up for TeenSafe so we can look up your record and provide feedback to our customer support team on how they could have better helped you. Our support team works very hard at providing useful assistance and encourages feedback to improve their efforts.
I see people saying it's a scam, it doesn't work... but it does work... at least for me it does. It allows me to know where my daughter is physically and at least that gives me some sense of relieve.
1) Every time I logged in, my child got a message from Apple that she was required to change her iCloud password. And I do mean EVERY TIME I logged in.
2) Deleted messages (the ones you really want to monitor!) are often garbled and without a date, or give an erroneous date such as sometime during the year 2000 (before my daughter was born and before text messaging existed, as far as I know)
3) You can easily sign up online, but if you want to cancel, you are required to call an 800 number and speak to a representative. Teensafe says this is for your security. Yeah, right! Why is it "secure" to sign up online but not to cancel online? Also, when I called, the ONLY thing the rep asked for was my account number or email address. How secure is that? NOT!
4) Bottom line: in my opinion, TeenSafe is all about making a quick buck and does NOT have my child's best interests in mind.
5) Recommendation: try Ecamm's PhoneView instead. Works MUCH better and is much cheaper in the long run (a lifetime of PhoneView for about the same price as three month's of TeenSafe).
Richard,
We’re very sorry the iCloud lockout issue affected your service. It is frustrating to our team as well and we are spending a lot of development time to resolve.
It is difficult to determine the exact cause, as various factors seem to contribute to account lockouts and they can happen instantly or can be delayed by a day or more. While detecting the precise cause is difficult, what is clear is that the issue is industry-wide and affects all monitoring services.
Respectfully we ask that you keep in mind that TeenSafe consists of a team of hardworking, dedicated people. What we do is technologically difficult and we strive to provide the best service for parents to protectively monitor their tweens and teens.
Again, we apologize and understand your frustration, the TeenSafe team
TeenSafe won't work with iPhone. The way it is supposed to work, after you sign up, you enter your child's Apple ID and password on the TeenSafe site and then you can view your child's texts, web searches, etc. - TeenSafe pulls this info from your child's iCloud. Except, when TeenSafe does this, Apple thinks it is an intrusion and locks your child's account for "security reasons." Your child's Apple ID account is then locked until you verify it and change the Apple ID password... It happens every time TeenSafe accesses your child's iCloud - do this too many times and you get permanently locked. I contacted TeenSafe customer service and they said this is a "known issue" with the "highest resolution priority" but there is "no ETA" as to when this will be resolved. This makes TeenSafe useless with an iPhone. And, they refused to refund my money (both in email correspondence and when I called) -- all they would say is "you purchased the service for 30 days and there are no refunds" even as they acknowledged their service doesn't work! Don't waste your money.
Julie,
We totally understand your frustration in dealing with the Apple iCloud account lockout issue. We have resources working on this issue but as you can tell Apple is not making it easy for our industry. It is difficult to determine the exact cause, as various factors seem to contribute to account lockouts and they can happen instantly or can be delayed by a day or more. And, not every customer who performs the same pattern of actions is affected in the same way.
While detecting the precise cause is difficult the issue is industry-wide and affects all monitoring services.
Please send your email address to ruth.doering@teensafe.com so I can look into the refund as we ARE offering a credit to existing customers as the tool is currently not working for some of our customers as well as it used to work. Best, the TeenSafe team
I used Teen Safe on my kids' iPhones. It works by backing up the phone to iCloud and restoring it to TeenSafe's web site so you can view it via their portal. It doesn't update data automatically and is only as current as the most recent backup.
The advertised GPS functionality is something I was never able to get working. It doesn't show location history nor was I able to reliably look at their current location. I am able to track their location through other means. (Find My Friends on Apple iPhone does this outside of TeenSafe.)
It does not show you any photo or video content. If you're hoping to ensure your child is not engaging in sexting, etc, this product is useless.
It doesn't monitor SnapChat. It does monitor Kik but the messages are not threaded and photos are not shown. Text messages are not organized into conversations.
Instagram is no longer supported.
Facebook monitoring is done by linking the account to into the TeenSafe dashboard. Frankly, since you need all of the passwords for each of these accounts anyway, you'd be better off simply logging into the various accounts as them to see what they're up to.
The bottom line: This product is more or less useless and delivers far less than is promised by the company.
We started noticing that our daughter was starting to behave strange when she started in her new highschool. The fact that she was going into a new school, new friends, new everything was enough for us to think her behavior was a little strange. But I started worrying when her grades started to go down and this was not typical in her. I started checking on different ways to check on her phone and see if there was something going on with a boy or something else, but it was almost impossible to check her phone without her knowing. I did a little bit of research and found Teensafe and signed up. To our surprise, our daughter was being bullied by kids from school and I found chat conversations with another friend of hers from her old school saying that she felt depressed, low selfsteem, ugly and all this kind of things that you would never want to hear your kid say. We approached the situation fast, did tell her what we were doing and talked to the school. We are doing everything possible to make sure our daughter comes out of this dark situation and shines again. Using Teensafe as a tool to help me get my daughter back on track is one of the best decisions I have ever made.
I can say that the best feature so far that Teensafe has come up with is the ability to block Snap Chat which in my opinion is a dangerous app that can get our kids in trouble.
The main reason I got this was to monitor my kids' phone. This site advertises that they will show what apps are downloaded, what texts are sent and received, and what their internet activity is.
I set this service up for my 2 kids. Text messages were only current on one of their phones. The other was delayed. The bigger issue though is they claim to monitor internet activity and they do not. I was paying a set amount for all their services. The internet part want a big deal so I let it slide for a few months. I then contacted customer service today to see why the internet monitoring wasn't working. They told me Google changed their privacy settings so their service can no longer monitor the internet. I asked if there was a reduced price since they no longer were offering all their services. I was told no. I also notice they are still advertising internet usage though. That's very deceptive. I canceled my account and hope I don't have the hassle of continued billing.
In response to the Teen Safe representative that commented:
Then a) you shouldn't advertise that you offer that service. At the very minimum, you should state upfront clearly that there is a difference in the level of service. I re-looked at the page today and it still advertises as if it includes that service for everyone. Your technical difficulties do not justify the deceptive advertising.
B) you shouldn't change Android users the same for less service than iphone users get. If you are going to have tiered service by phone type, you should have tiered pricing by device.
Greetings and sorry you had issues. What we are doing is technically very difficult. For the newest Android OS 6.0 or higher, Google does not allow access to any Internet History to any company. Operating system updates aren’t in our control and can affect our service offerings. Monitoring internet works for iOS so it does get confusing. We are hoping Google will change their policy so internet activity can be monitored again. Best, the TeenSafe team
What a joke for Apple products. My suggestion is to not waste your money. They better not charge me after I have cancelled.
Sorry you had an issue. When Apple issues operating system or iCloud updates our team works very hard to update our software as soon as possible. There are times when this takes longer than we like and the software doesn’t work as designed. We currently have many parents successfully using our iPhone version of both TeenSafe Monitor and TeenSafe Control with a usual number of misunderstandings that we attempt to resolve quickly. Also, we have just issued an updated version. Best, the TeenSafe team
Didn't work from the start, so I cancelled. Was finally able to get a portion of the charges removed from my bank. They don't return calls or emails!
Yvonne, Sorry the service did not work for you. We would like to address your issue with our customer support team We have 15 full-time reps working with our customers, managed by ZenDesk a leading customer service portal. Calls and emails are routinely returned. If you message us your email we will look into what happened. It has happened in the past that a reviewer accidentally confused us with a competitor that does not have a customer support team. We would greatly appreciate the opportunity to look into this for you. Best, the TeenSafe team
TeenSafe is stealing people money. It used to work great, We loved it. Then Apple changed the rules. TeenSafe / Apple now locks out my child's Apple ID daily. TeenSafe tech support says that we need to create a NEW apple ID to get it to work... that sucks. But we did it anyway... next day. LOCKED OUT AGAIN! I know the issue is with Apple... but TeenSafe continues to take peoples money and they KNOW it doesn't work. Somebody should start a class action lawsuit against these con artists. I have tried THREE different times with three different accounts. Same results every time. It doesn't work, don't buy it, don't download, don't even do the free trial. Hopefully they will fix it soon, for now, its USELESS... and they wont issue refunds! Read the other reviews you will see that what I am saying is true. If your reading this... skip TeenSafe, try Phone Sherriff or iPhone Investigator... or just monitor there iMessages on an OLD iPad or OLD iTouch, by logging into the second device as a MIRRORING device. * will respond to this review with an excuse how there program works for Androids... but not all Apple devices... so its not thier fault. THEN STOP SELLING THE PRODUCT UNTIL ITS RESOLVED *!
*Personal information redacted by admin
I read a response that if you were an Android user, you would be extremely happy. I AM NOT EXTREMELY HAPPY! I'm an android user as well as my daughter and I specifically downloaded and paying $14.95/month to be able to monitor calls, text, location, web history and 3rd party app messages. In today's society of a huge digital footprint, as parents, I believe that parents need to monitor very closely to protect their kids. With that being said, the 7 day trial was pretty limited and wanted the full experience. After installing the program, I was happy to see that I was able to see her text messages (yes, even if she tried to delete it) and phone calls. However, that is the extent of it. I wasn't able to view her location, web history (per Teensafe Customer Service, Google changed something and can longer view it) and 3rd party apps like KIK, Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Google Hangout, etc and the messaging there (was told this can be done with it was an Iphone).
For $189 annually, I expect this software to work as advertise, but unfortunately, it does not. I'm very disappointed! I was told they were developing a new version and when asked the ETA of the rollout, they didn't know.
Very poor and deceiving way to get people to purchase.
Greetings Bonnie,
We understand why you’re frustrated. Our goal is to deliver the best monitoring tool parents can use to keep their teens and tweens safe. Unfortunately, Apple, Google and others do not make this easy. When they change their operating systems at times certain features are compromised. Our development team works very hard to add these features back to our service offering.
TeenSafe was founded after a successful midnight mission by our founder to recover his daughter’s deleted texts finding that she was being viscously cyberbullied. We felt strongly that other parents would want this same capability.
We’ve logged millions of successful transactions over the years and our software is highly functional but not always as what we do is very difficult. We have many parents who are grateful for what we do provide.
As an FYI, you can view sent and received messages for WhatsApp and Kik. You call also view, block and schedule all third-party apps installed on their phone. No third-party can monitor these apps unless they “jailbreak” the phone which we do not recommend.
Also, I apologize for the late response. I am located in Irma's path and was watching her trajectory and missed that your review came in.
Again, sorry your experience was frustrating as we totally agree with you that parents should engage in protective monitoring. Best, the TeenSafe Team
Never signed up never heard of them and they started billing me
Avoid them do not give your cc info.
Simon, Please send me your email to ruth.doeing@teensafe.com to address this issue. We simply can not bill you unless you create an account. We are not a scam and are very disappointed when comments like this appear. Our entire team works very hard in building digital safety tools and in promoting best practices for digital safety savvy parents. Again, would very much appreciate you contacting me to resolve.
AND THEY CONTINUE TO DEBIT MY ACCOUNT AFTER I CANCELLED THIS SERVICE ONE WEEK AFTER I JOINED AND I CANNOT GET THEM TO STOP DEBITING MY BANK ACCOUNT STAY AWAY FROM THIS SERVICE IT IS FRAUDULENT
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TeenSafe created the first parental iPhone monitoring solution and is the iOS and Android service of choice amongst families, with over one million sign-ups to date. TeenSafe? ۪s secure technology provides parents with the tools to safeguard their childr...
Allison,
We are sorry that your experience did not garner the results you were looking for and you certainly put a lot of effort into the trial. TeenSafe was founded after a successful midnight mission by our founder to recover his daughter’s deleted texts finding that she was being viscously cyberbullied. We felt strongly that other parents would want this same capability.
We’ve logged millions of successful transactions over the years and our software is highly functional but not always as what we do is very difficult. We have many parents who are grateful for what we do provide.
The iCloud lockout issue is an industry-wide and affects all monitoring services. We are working hard to evaluate potential solutions and we have a full team of development resources working on this issue.
It is difficult to determine the exact cause, as various factors seem to contribute to account lockouts and they can happen instantly or can be delayed by a day or more. Moreover, not every customer who performs the same pattern of actions is affected in the same way.
Again, we are sorry that TeenSafe did not work for your family and thought we’d share this step-by-step parental guide that can assist with privacy and security settings. https://www.teensafe.com/blog/ultimate-guide-protecting-kids-online/
Best, the TeenSafe team