Making the web a safer place

We want to make the web safer for children. We want them to use chat rooms, forums and web 2.0 sites with the knowledge that the other users of the site are also children. Childminder allows sites like these to check the birth date of users as they log in so that they can enforce an under 18 policy or any other age limit they wish.

Childminder is a free, non-profit service provided by Stephen Mulligan (development) and Rodney Payne (promotion) in association with the [insert government department] and the [insert charity].

You may find the following links useful:

  • If you are a parent wanting a better understanding of how Childminder protects your child and what you have to do for them to join the system you should read about our security system and your privacy as well as our advice for parents.
  • If you are a developer wanting to integrate Childminder into your site read our developers pages.
  • If you are a school and you want your pupils to benefit from Childminder read about Childminder for schools.

What Childminder does

Childminder provides a system for website developers to age-verify users of their sites. This means that they can set up a child-only areas such as a forum or a chat room and ensure that adults cannot access that area.

Childminder protects your child’s identity because we do not need any information apart from your child’s date of birth and a scrambled version of their e-mail address. There is no way of retrieving the original e-mail address or of identifying your child from the information that we hold.

Childminder obtains it’s information from schools and from some parental organisations. Information is always used with permission of the parent and we consider child privacy to be paramount.

Childminder records all log-ins carried out using using our system. In the event that law-enforcement officials request records or data in respect of an individual child on our database we generally comply with the request.

What Childminder doesn’t do

Childminder does not prevent your child from visiting dangerous sites.

We cannot verify that websites that use Childminder do so in a secure manner so you and your child must still be vigilant.