Apple has reportedly been awarded an anti- sexting patent. The patent awarded by US Patent and Trademark Office was filed in 2008. The patent, with official title “Text-based communication control for personal communication device,” is sure to be a boon for parents who don’t want their kids to exchange naughty messages or stumble upon one.
According to news reports, the patent background info states that the problem it solves is that there is currently “No way to monitor and control text communications to make them user appropriate. For example, users such as children may send or receive messages (intentionally or not) with parentally objectionable language.”
Here’s how the patent’s description reads:
In one embodiment, the control application includes a parental control application. The parental control application Systems, devices, and methods are provided for enabling a user to control the content of text-based messages sent to or received from an administered device. In some embodiments, a message will be blocked (incoming or outgoing) if the message includes forbidden content. In other embodiments, the objectionable content is removed from the message prior to transmission or as part of the receiving process.
The content of such a message is controlled by filtering the message based on defined criteria. The criteria may be defined according to a parental control application. These techniques also may be used, in accordance with instructional embodiments, to require the administered devices to include certain text in messages. These embodiments might, for example, require that a certain number of Spanish words per day be included in e-mails for a child learning Spanish.