Secure Family - Issues with app and usage

I agree. This app is hugely disappointing. I am beyond frustrated that functionality I use to have with SmartLimits is no longer available. We actually switched back to AT&T, after trying TMobile's much hyped and terrible parental control app, because we wanted Smart Limits back. As soon as we switched we were told it was unavailable. I know that now no carrier has this functionality, but we are going to leave AT&T on principle. 

Why did you take away my ability to set my teens limits at night withOUT their permission?  Using more data perhaps?  It is disingenuous to claim all you have to do is pair an app rated 4+ year on a teen’s phone and expect them not to delete it for access.  This is planet earth where teens do not obey parents!  By having such a low age I cannot even do app restrictions in the phone’s setup without removing all non standard apps. Thanks for removing a feature without telling me.  I am beyond frustrated having to take my Sunday to figure out what you did!

Wcbrewster1

"Thanks for removing a feature without telling me.  I am beyond frustrated having to take my Sunday to figure out what you did!"

 Wcbrewster1 Let me tell you in simple terms what they did. ATT hired a bunch of dumbasses that dont know how to properly design a mobile application where parents have control over their teenagers phone and actually released it and called it "Secure Family"..... when it is not "secure" because teenagers can disable it and simply "pin" the app to get around the blocks anyway.... so really there is nothing on my app that is working right now the way ATT claims it works. Oh ok sorry one thing "works" I can tell where they are at within 1.3 miles! Wow... great! I give them until the end of Dec.... if its not fixed then I will be looking for another provider!

This new app is horrible! It doesn't let you do anything but see where your child is, and now we have to basically send a notification to link their phone, which by the way I pay for, to be able to see up to date anything. It's not worth the price I pay for it. AT&T needs to bring Smart Limits back  at least then it realized that my child was a child and didn't require their location to be on, I could block unwanted numbers without them being able to reverse it, this new app makes me want to suspend their phone every night they are home just to set limits!!

I agree fully. I can't believe they took the best and safest part out of smart limits. Blocking my children from calling everyone except who I approved during restricted times. Since the new app launch he has a hay day calling and texting everyone he can. I may take the phones permanently. I don't want to see every message detail or listen in on calls, but seriously, would like to limit who they can call/text when they are at school or working. The new time limit is pointless if he can just keep texting and calling. HELLO texting is the most popular app for teenagers, so let's not limit that! THANKS ATT FOR YOUR LACK OF PARENTAL CONTROLS!!

This Family Secure application is a joke. My teenagers aren't going to install the Companion either. And now my wife and I no long have the ability to be alerted when our children's data usage is excessive. We can no longer stop them from using data, texting or calling, during the evenings when they should be sleeping (on school nights). Or even on non-school night, say after 2am. Good luck to the suckers who plan on paying monthly for this garbage, as this is only going to work on 9 year olds or younger. AT&T has totally taken the control out of paying customers's hands, and put it into the hands of the nonpaying customer (Our Children). What fool(s) thought that this was a good idea?? The old Smart Limits app was so much better!! If AT&T had any sense they'd bring it back!

The real solution is switching to T-Mobile because their Family Allowances does what Smart Limits used to do.  I was a AT&T customer for over 20 years and switched because of this issue.

I am not a fan of TMobile at all but I also HATE this new app that it is not worth paying for also doesn't do what it is supposed to do. I am sent emails about the location problems of the app and received no response.

I literally called yesterday about only allowing certain numbers to call my child (Verizon used to have this when I was with them about 7 years ago, on their family plan for kids).  AT&T told me to block the numbers. Ummmm ahole they are kids they find ways around the blocked number (calling from a different number). It's beyond frustrating AT&T does not have a feature that only allows for phone numbers to be accepted on their childrens phone. Totally annoyed! Thinking about getting my son a pre-paid verizon phone just because of this issue.

My wife and I thought that using the “Secure Family” App would be effective in asserting our parental controls over our teenager and her phone. We soon found out that for this to “work,” we simply needed to pair our phones with our teens’ phone, which would install a companion app. So here are 2 questions for the brilliant engineers who designed this: What makes you think any teenager would be ok having this companion app on their phone, and how could it be effective if they could simply disable/delete it on their end anyway?!!