New smartphone for children will automatically block nudes

A new smartphone has launched which will automatically block nude images from being seen or taken.

It offers another option from the ‘brick’ type phones many parents have turned to, allowing children to access social media and messaging if their parents agree, but with extra layers of safety inbuilt.

Finnish phone company Human Mobile Devices (HMD), which also makes Nokia handsets, developed the phone in response to widespread concerns from parents about standard smartphones.

Designed especially for children, creators said the Fuse handset, available with Vodafone and backed by the government, is not just a new model of phone but a whole new category.

How does it block nudes?

It uses artificial intelligence to analyse the picture on screen, recognising if there is nudity and preventing it from being shown.

This is done on the handset itself, with HarmBlock+ AI from UK company SafeToNet analysing content in realtime, without the need to transmit data for processing elsewhere.

It was designed in response to a ‘national crisis’ of children being groomed into sending nude images of themselves, or sending images to peers.

An Ofsted report in 2021 found that there was an epidemic of sexual harassment in schools, with nearly 90% of girls and 50% of boys being sent explicit pictures or videos of things they did not want to see.

New research from Vodafone found that one in five secondary school aged children from 11 to 17 have felt pressured into sharing an explicit image of themselves.

What else does the phone offer?

The phone offers wide-ranging parental controls, and makers say it can ‘grow with your child’ as parents unlock more functions such as the camera or music apps.

Features include:

• Location tracking every 24 seconds
• Parental control over which apps can be accessed (done from the adult’s phone)
• Screen time limits for individual apps
• Default blocking of internet and social media apps
• Ability to set safe zones for physical location and receive alerts when those zones are entered or exited
• Contacts can be ‘whitelisted’ so only trusted people can be messaged
• No data shared outside the device on Cloud (e.g. photos or browsing history)

How to buy the Fuse smartphone?

It will be available to buy from 5pm today in stores and online, exclusively from Vodafone UK and Three. The phone costs £33 a month with a £30 upfront cost.

In the coming months, it will roll out to other countries, starting with Australia.

How was it developed?

HMD say they consulted over 37,000 parents and children globally to work out what was missing in the Better Phone Project.

Richard Pursey, Founder of SafeToNet, said his software made the new phone ‘incompatible’ with pornography as the AI embedded within the operating system coud not be removed or worked around.

Dan Sexton, Chief Technology Officer at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said: ‘Children and young people are increasingly being exposed to criminals and predators who can target them through their phones, putting them at risk of grooming, exploitation, coercion, and abuse.

‘We know any device with the internet and a camera can, sadly, be an open door for criminals to access any home and inflict the most extreme abuse. This can cost lives.

‘This is why proactive efforts to make children’s devices safer are so important.’

Parents said the phones currently available for children, such as the Sage iPhone or the Barbie phone (also made by HMD), were either too risky, or too limited. Safety apps designed to make standard smartphones safer were ‘often easy to bypass’ so families wanted something more robust.