With Qustodio, you can set up a Panic Button on Android mobile phones associated with your account. When this option is enabled, users can send emergency alerts with location information from their smartphones to a list of trusted contacts.
Important: Qustodio cannot be used to replace any service provided by police, ambulance, or fire department. Qustodio will not contact any emergency services on your behalf.
What is Qustodio’s Panic Button and what does it do?
Qustodio’s Panic Button is designed to provide a means for children to send an alert directly and quickly from their phone to emergency contacts. Enabling this feature adds a Panic Button to the home screen of the Qustodio app for Android. When this button is activated, alerts with location information will be sent from the user’s device by SMS text message or by email to a trusted contact list. Note that these SMS messages may have a cost depending on your carrier.
How to activate the Panic Button
It is important to note that when you install Qustodio on an Android device, the Panic Button is turned off by default. Also, to ensure that this feature will work properly, visit Google Play from your child’s device and make sure you have the latest version of Qustodio installed. If not, please update to the latest version.
Then, to activate the Panic Button, you have to follow the following steps in the Family Portal and on the phone itself:
- In the Family Portal: Visit your Family Portal and go into your child’s profile and choose Rules > Panic Button. Switch the “Enable Panic Button” option to YES. By default, as the Administrator of the Qustodio account, you will be automatically added as a “Trusted Contact” for this user. You can easily add other contacts by clicking on the “Invite trusted contact” button and follow the instructions provided.
- On your child's phone: Once the feature is activated in your Family Portal, turn on the phone and click on the Qustodio app. You will see a series of screens explaining how the feature works. Please read them carefully. Then, tap on the “SOS bubble”. This will show a message confirming that you want to activate the feature. You can choose the option “Don’t ask again” if you wish, and you can then simply click on “Turn on.” The expected behavior is that Qustodio will activate the Panic Mode and send an alert to all trusted contacts. If you've added mobile numbers to the list Qustodio may ask for a confirmation to send the emergency SMS. You should also receive an alert by email.
What happens when I add a new trusted contact?
When you add a new trusted contact, that contact will receive either an email or an SMS message on your behalf, asking them to confirm that they are willing to be a trusted contact for your Qustodio account. Once a trusted contact is added for one Qustodio profile, they won’t have to confirm again for you to add them to another profile.
How to use Qustodio’s Panic Button
When your child feels unsafe or wants to share his/her location with entrusted contacts, he/she can now go on the phone and click on the Qustodio’s app. This will automatically open the Panic Button home screen. A simple tap on the “SOS bubble” will send an alert to all entrusted contacts with location information.
If you've added mobile numbers to the list Qustodio may ask for a confirmation to send the emergency SMS.
Note that the Panic Mode will remain active until the child clicks a second time on the “SOS” bubble. A popup message will then appear to confirm if the Panic Mode should be turned off. If they proceed, you will receive an email with a link to the last available location available informing you that the alert has been canceled.
What happens when the Panic Button is activated?
Once the Panic Button is activated, all trusted contacts for the user will receive an “I need help” message with a link to a page with the user’s latest location. That link will remain active until the Panic alert is canceled. The user’s location will be updated every 5 minutes as long as it is available. In the Qustodio Portal, location updates will also be reported during the panic alert, even if these features are turned off in the family portal.
You may not see the location when you first open the link, but it will be updated as soon as Qustodio confirms the device's location.
How to turn off the Panic Button once it has been activated.
There are two ways to turn off the Panic Button once activated. The first way is to turn off Panic Mode directly from the device, by clicking again on the SOS button on the home screen of the Qustodio app. The second way is to log into your Portal and visit Rules > Panic Button you’ll see at the bottom of the screen the list of devices, and you’ll be able to turn off the Panic Button on the device on which Panic Mode is currently active.
How to completely deactivate the Panic Button feature
To deactivate this feature, you can simply visit your Family Portal, go into your child’s profile, choose Rules > Panic Button, and turn off the switch.
Troubleshooting
If you don’t see your child’s mobile phone in the list of Monitored Android devices, please double check the following:
- You have downloaded and installed the latest version of Qustodio from the Google Play Store. To do so, please follow these instructions.
- You have correctly associated the child’s profile in Qustodio with the phone in Settings > Devices > Edit device options.
- If you want to add a new child to your Qustodio account, please find how to do so here.
- The device is running the latest version of Android. For most devices, you can update the operating system to the latest version in Settings > About Phone/Device > Software Update > Update. If you’re not sure how to do that, or can’t find this option, please refer to your mobile device user’s guide.
Note. This feature is only available to Premium users and is not available on iOS devices yet. This feature is not available for Android tablets without calling feature.