Smart Safety Alerts for Parents

Contextual, timely prompts that call out potential concerns across a range of leading messaging and social media platforms.

Joey checks your child's messaging and online activity for safety patterns, then surfaces potential concerns by severity and context so parents know what may need attention.

Worried about stranger danger? See Risky Contacts.

Want the backstory? What I learned testing message monitoring

Parent using Joey app to stay connected with their child's digital world

New to iPhone safety?

Start with the guide built for parents.

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What Smart Alerts Detect

Safety signals parents can act on

Joey checks your child's online messaging patterns and classifies potential concerns by severity and context. Each Smart Alert arrives with enough context to help parents take calm, confident action.

Suspicious contacts icon

Suspicious contacts

Flags unknown numbers, sudden contact churn, and outreach patterns that don't feel safe.

Bullying and harassment icon

Bullying & harassment

Surfaces repeated put-downs, intimidation, or language meant to isolate your child.

Concerning language icon

Detect hate speech, slurs and profanity in iMessage

Detects escalating language, slurs, or harmful rhetoric that signals conversations are off track.

Emotional distress icon

Emotional distress

Looks for signals of anxiety, withdrawal, or self-harm language so parents can check in early.

Money and gifts icon

Money & gifts

Highlights payment requests, gift-card pressure, and money drops mixed with urgency cues.

Personal information icon

Detect your child sharing personal information (PII)

Warns when kids are asked to share addresses, passwords, location, or contact details.

Drugs and alcohol icon

Drugs & alcohol

Catches references to substance use, supply offers, or planning that needs adult guidance.

What we don't see

Not full chat logs; not live interception. Joey checks backup data for safety patterns and provides context-aware alerts without compromising your child's privacy.

How Smart Alerts Work

Joey checks your child's online messaging patterns and classifies potential concerns by severity and context.

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On-device backup analysis

Joey checks message patterns from secure device backups to identify potential concerns.

Risk classification

Joey classifies potential concerns by severity and context to reduce false positives and focus attention where it matters.

Parent alert with context

Receive contextual alerts with just enough information to understand and respond appropriately.

Kids know Joey is there; parents choose when and how to review. We believe in transparency and building trust through open communication rather than secretive monitoring.

Keep Coaching Conversations Going

Pair Smart Alerts with in-depth guides from our parenting library so you always have language, scripts, and next steps ready when an alert fires.

Featured guide

Safety monitoring vs. spying: finding the balance

Walk through a transparent monitoring plan that keeps kids informed while protecting their privacy.

Read article

Parent perspective

How to handle money requests in teen chats

Learn the scripts, household rules, and recovery steps Grant's family uses when Smart Alerts flag payment pressure.

Read article

Related features for parents

Explore these to get the full picture

iPhone Monitoring

Complete iPhone monitoring hub

Explore iPhone Monitoring

How's My Child? Report

Weekly insights and trends

Explore How's My Child Report

Risky Contacts

Spot unknown numbers and suspicious outreach

Explore Risky Contacts

Analytics & Social Graph

Trends, contacts, and alert categories

Explore Analytics & Social Graph
View PricingSee Joey in action

Frequently Asked Questions

Smart Alerts focus on the problems parents worry about most: bullying and harassment, suspicious or stranger contacts, personal information sharing, money and gift pressure, hate or abusive language, explicit or sexual content, threats of harm, and suspicious links or scams. Joey flags early warning signs so you can step in before something small turns into a bigger issue.

After you sync your child's iPhone with Joey Desktop, Joey reviews supported activity for patterns linked to our safety categories. Instead of flooding you with noise, Joey prioritises high-risk situations and combines them into clear Smart Alerts so you get fewer, more meaningful notifications.

No. Smart Alerts are summaries, not full transcripts. Each alert includes the relevant message, the Smart Alert category, and a short explanation, so you understand what is going on without turning Joey into a live spy feed of every message. Automated alerts can make mistakes, and you can report errors to improve alert quality.

Yes. False positives can happen with any automated alert system. Joey is tuned to err on the side of safety, so occasionally harmless jokes or inside banter might trigger an alert. That is why every alert includes context and leaves the final call to you, the parent.

Yes. Joey elevates direct threats, intimidation and physical-harm language to higher-priority Smart Alerts. If the wording suggests someone could get hurt, Joey pushes that alert to the top of your list so you can act quickly.

Joey can recognise some patterns, but no automated system perfectly understands every joke, meme or inside reference. Smart Alerts are there to highlight possible risks; your knowledge of your child and their friendships is what turns that signal into the right response.

At this time, you can request new alert categories that are important to you. Joey Plus subscribers will be able to ask follow-up questions for each alert to collect more context and gain deeper insights.

No. Joey can analyse safety signals across iMessage, Snapchat, YouTube and Google, with WhatsApp and Discord coming soon. Smart Alerts pull all of that into a single view so you don’t have to check every app separately.

Smart Alerts are tuned for kids roughly 9–15 years old, the years when most tweens and early teens get their first iPhone and start exploring more of the online world on their own. But Joey works for all your children that are using these common messaging, social and search platforms.