...not mention of encryption.
Although the idea is lovely, I'm not going to encourage my kiddo to chat with his buddies on a service that can hoover up their imagination for later manipulation.
Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
201–210 of 265 posts
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#202For three or four endpoints all within the home, you could do this with just ATAs and not even need a SIP server. Many ATAs have a configurable "dial plan" that will let you map a number to an IP address, thus giving you the ability to call the other terminals directly within the LAN.
Do you have an ATA you like? They are all janky in different ways in my experience.
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#203Why does it seem like many parents are unaware that a hand me down iPhone can be heavily locked down with screen time settings? A list of things you can do: - allowed list of apps, can reduce it to just phone, imessage, and utilities like weather app - effectively permanent downtime, just set the end time less than start time such as 3:00 am to 2:59 am (technically 1 minute of non downtime). This blocks apps except f…
Hello! Parent that's fully aware of this. My son has access to a landline and it solves the problem of tech as a tool vs a past time. If he thinks of his friend, he calls, friends reach out etc. No scrolling for something to do. I see my phone usage and am constantly trying to introduce friction into it. This is an extension of that concept.
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
That privacy policy doesn't sound out of the norm for any telco, which will be subjected to laws that require https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception
It'd be extremely out of the norm for telco companies. Tin Can uses the calls and voicemails to collect data on children and sell that to others. That has zero to do with lawful interception. The moment Tin Can becomes popular enough you can bet that the government will be snooping those calls too
It would be pretty spooky if your voice managed to come out the other party's telephone without ever having been collected into and processed by the telephone network. Taking audio from one place and transporting it to another is what we pay it for.
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
This text does not appear in the link. I do see: >Call Logs: We collect information about calls made using Phones, including the phone numbers you call or receive calls from, the date/time of the calls, and the length of the calls. We also collect network quality metrics and other technical data related to call performance. Please note that we do not record calls. The version of the privacy policy cited in the previo…
In addition to collecting all the metadata they also collect the voices of children recorded in voicemails. Their policy says that the information they collect is used to "Send you marketing communications (see the section below for information about how to opt out of these communications at any time)" and to "Monitor and analyze trends, usage, and activities in connection with our Phones and Services, including to g…
It would be better if they specifically excluded advertising uses of call metadata, etc. I assume this is getting mixed in from their ecommerce efforts to sell the devices. But how do you expect them to play back the voicemail if they don’t have it? What would be the point of "please leave a message after the beep" if the audio is going to /dev/null?
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#206Why does it seem like many parents are unaware that a hand me down iPhone can be heavily locked down with screen time settings? A list of things you can do: - allowed list of apps, can reduce it to just phone, imessage, and utilities like weather app - effectively permanent downtime, just set the end time less than start time such as 3:00 am to 2:59 am (technically 1 minute of non downtime). This blocks apps except f…
Apple makes this a huge PITA, along with having to do a significant amount of it from another apple device.
I'm glad we ditched iPads, it sucked.
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
My kids are grown up, but my mom is worried about her AT&T service switching to VOIP. She didn't understand my description of Ooma, which I've been using for many years, but now I'm thinking that I should just bring over all the needed hardware and just call it a landline.
Landlines work when there is no power, which depending on where you live can happen more or less often but an important feature for an elderly family member especially if they live alone. For my situation, telling my mom her voip phone was a landline would be problematic. I do need some solution though, AT&T technicians tell me copper thieves are disrupting her service regularly.
If the isp doesn’t go down with the power outage you could probably get a big enough ups to keep the router and voip phone going for at least a couple of hours. Those things don’t use much power
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#208Why does it seem like many parents are unaware that a hand me down iPhone can be heavily locked down with screen time settings? A list of things you can do: - allowed list of apps, can reduce it to just phone, imessage, and utilities like weather app - effectively permanent downtime, just set the end time less than start time such as 3:00 am to 2:59 am (technically 1 minute of non downtime). This blocks apps except f…
I did that for my kid when he was 10 or so. He had it "hacked" before I knew it. If he had done it himself, I would have been proud, but some other kid did it. Never even tried after that. He's 17 now, he's fine.
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#209We actually have one of these between our group of friends and their kids and it's awesome. The kids call each other to chat and setup play dates or to go run around in the street. Our kids will call back home to let us know they made it to the other persons house, or let us know they're coming back home too.
The tactility is incredible, and it's so just so cute to watch them chat away (5 year olds!)
Re: Tin Can, a 'landline' for kids
#210For the nerdy who might want to set up their own similar system for their kids, and let their kids pick any landline phone they want, you can get an ATA (Analog Telephone Adapter) on eBay for cheap, then connect it to a Raspberry Pi with Asterisk, and any VOIP provider, to make your own PBX. ( https://www.littlebytesofpi.com/raspberrypihomephone/ )
It blows my mind that the current Cisco ATA is $150+. For the service I am building (havenphone.com) I used Grandstream HT801 with success with voip.ms. I don't love how easy their cloud can take over the device though.
There are much older ATAs on eBay for ~$20, they still work fine, since POTS and SIP don't change