Date Time Parental control apps behaving badly Researchers from EPFL and Spain’s IMDEA Software Institute and IMDEA Networks Institute, have found that many parental control applications collect and share data without consent, and fail to comply with regulatory requirements. Parental control applications available on Android through the Google Play Store are used by parents to monitor and limit their children’s online activities and even physical location; for example, to examine a child’s web browsing history, to block or limit their access to certain websites or features, or through surveilling the location of their mobile devices to know where their children are.