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AT&T Secure Family® parent app App Complaints & User Negative Comments 2024
AT&T Secure Family® parent app app received 37 complaints, negative comments and reviews by users. Have you ever had a bad experience using AT&T Secure Family® parent app? Can you share your negative thoughts about at&t secure family® parent app?
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AT&T Secure Family® parent app for Negative User Reviews
✓ Well designed app - with flawsI have two big issues with the app: 1) you can limit screen time by time slots, but not by total hours/day. I need both. Want to lock access during school hours, but then let’s say limit internet/game access to one hour on school days, and maybe three hours on weekend days. Can’t do that. 2) when I “pause” internet from the parent app it does not consistently shut down internet on my kid’s phone. Right now she is supposed to be paused but is playing away on Roblox no problem. Yesterday pause worked no problem..Version: 3.13.1
✓ Won’t let me agree to termsThe app forced me to update. And the new app wants me to accept terms. Only choices are “I agree” which is greyed out or “Decline” which is the ONLY thing I can do. And when I type Decline it says I can’t use the app. Then allow me to accept. Honestly. Does anyone test these applications? Or are they outsourced to cheap labor countries that, well, you get what you pay for. Right now the app is. I longer useable. This app let me locate my son back in June. He turned off his find my phone. But he couldn’t shut off this app. And it allowed me to find him the day he tried to commit suicide and get him to a hospital and save his life. Wish it were more accurate, but it gave me an area and I found him. AT&T is charging way more than other cell companies. Can’t you pay for quality programmers? Fix this! Also this app says my son has to download some app too. Even though it said this in the past, I never did snd the tracking still worked. I think to the nearest cell tower, but still have me an idea. And now it needs a helper app? Who designed that? If a kid doesn’t want to be found, he can delete the app. If this requires an app on my sons phone for me to track him, what happens if he tries to commit suicide again and disappears and I can’t find him? My guess is the answer would be a huge lawsuit against AT&T..Version: 11.0.16
✓ Lousy update! Why did you mess with perfection?Seriously. This app which worked fine for the ten years we’ve used it is now crap. Doesn’t update locations when it works at all. Shows me 50 miles away from where I’m sitting. Shows my husband in a town he was in yesterday. Is now over complicated and no longer the elegant tracker it was. It took three techs (when I called because I was having trouble with the newest version) twelve hours to unfreeze the app on my iPhone. I’ll be looking elsewhere for á similar app. You really dropped the ball on this one AT&T.Version: 11.0.16
✓ Horrible update - poor user experienceI wish I could select zero stars. I have had the Secure Family app for years and have been happy until the new upgrade. I have never had a fairly decent and successful application go through an upgrade that turned out to be so non-user friendly. An upgrade should be seamless and the user should feel no pain and be able to enjoy the new functionality right from the start. This new upgrade is impossible to sync up, it causes every family member pain to have to do an upgrade, and even when doing so the app instructions to reconnect are horrible and basically unintelligible and incorrect. I will not pay another month for this poorly designed app upgrade..Version: 11.0.16
✓ Very upsetI accidentally chose the wrong number to be assigned as the primary parent but the app won’t allow me to change it. I contacted customer service and was advised to cancel the app subscription and to wait an hour for the app to reset the information. Well I did all of that. And here it is two hours later, I try to start the process all over and the app STILL will not allow me to change the primary parent to my ACTUAL number. This is ridiculous and VERY frustrating. It shouldn’t be this difficult. I wasted all this time trying to change this and to no avail, another dead end with AT&T. Smh!.Version: 3.16
✓ Defect in the appYou have to download the application on all the phones and if the children want to, they delete the app and that is a big problem because then you cannot locate them. The previous version did not need to download the app on the children's phones. It automatically appeared on the map where they were. our children's phones and now they don't, because if the children want to delete or stop the app on their phone, I am very upset the previous version was better in that I hope they can add that again, let me know because I already canceled the subscription ..Version: 11.0.16
✓ Hope you didn’t enter the wrong phone number as primary parent!If you accidentally entered your child’s phone number as the primary parent, you might as well call it quits because there’s no hope for you. You mean, you followed all the instructions of canceling, waiting 30 minutes, and signing back into your app, only to find your child’s phone number as primary parent? LoL!! Don’t call AT&T because you will turn blue. They will tell you that it’s Apple’s issue and of course Apple will tell you that it’s AT&T issue. As an IT professional myself, I’ve never seen an app in which a primary owner of accounts and it’s mobile devices not have any control on changing any setting on any app that they own. Cancel and save your $7.99 a month. It’s not worth it!.Version: 3.16
✓ HackedHacked by criminal empire of drug traffickers who have been hacking into whatever device I have for over 6 years. Salvatore Miranti, Gaige Scott Holdaway, Robert Eugene Wear, Clayton Jay Pruitt plus the rest of the gang of professional crooks with ties to local, county and state government officials and the ability to pay off in drugs. Every call is recorded, keylogger, and stalked in and out of the house. I pay for extra security and get the same as if I were still paying for straight talk, who had no clue that my SIM had been copied and my phone was cloned. I expected much better from this company than just to be hacked STILL from the same people. I constantly have told you who they are, where they are, and what is happening as 25+ years in federal prison for hacking isn’t long enough—but I guess they have enough cash or the drugs to pay even AT&T corporation off. Thanks again for compromising my communication and being able to have an inkling of safety or support in a professional phone company..Version: 3.16
✓ Inaccurate location and constantly needs re-pairingUpdate - I have no clue how this app have 4 stars, when all the reviews are negative and the positive ones are from 3 years ago. This app consistently puts my kids in the wood (where people drink and party), when they are over a mile away at a friends house. This is unacceptable. No point in using this if it’s not even close to accurate. It’s been a year with no fix. I live in a fairly decent sized city (not too large, not too small), so if the gps isn’t accurate here then it won’t be anywhere. Before grounding your teenager, check an alternate app like Life360 to see their location. This app has had my kids in horrific inner city neighborhoods, when I fact they were just right down the road (verified by going there). This is THE WORST app. Unfortunately AT&T had an app that worked moderately well, and shut that down for this app that has less functionality, is extremely inaccurate, stops working and you have to “repair it to your kids phone” weekly your kids can delete it, your kids will turn the app off (mine figured out quickly how to turn off VPN functionality that’s needed to make it work), etc etc.. I want a refund!.Version: 3.8.5
✓ Can’t add new devices since fall ‘23 updateThe app was updated in October/november and now doesn’t keep track of usage history. It always says “o minutes” every day. I got a new device yesterday and it won’t let me link it my app. Each time I try to invite him the app crashes and I have to start over. I’ve updated my phone, deleted and reinstalled the app, and called customer service. They told me they were running maintenance and to reinstall it in 30 minutes, then tried to sell me device protection plans….🙄. Needless to say 3 hours later the app still isn’t working even though I’m paying $7.99 a month. Hopefully it gets resolved soon because it worked well before the update a few months ago!.Version: 11.0.16
✓ Started out GreatStarted out great! However, recently found that when checking location it would place my child in places not possible for her to travel to. So much so that even when checking in a 5 minute time span it showed her in four completely different locations... MILES away from each other. Unless she could teleport herself, this is not possible. When this first started happening with the app I panicked because I actually thought she was in a location FAR away. It wasn’t until I kept checking and double checking that this strange glitch became apparent. Discontinued app so it would no longer cause me PANIC when checking on my child!.Version: 3.12.1
✓ App refuses to open and stuck at update screenApp is non-responsive now when you open it. It still runs in background with scheduled alert's but trying to actually open it seems to be stuck on an update screen that times out and tries to try again. The app itself is pretty basic. It can only track your child based on radio tower triangulation. If you want more advanced features you need to plant your child's phone with the other secure app aka spyware. This may work for young kids but for teens try to get into their phone to install anything; your mileage is going to vary. And if you can do that, then just enable the apple find my friends tracking and skip this subscription cost. The triangulation is maybe worth the cost of sub but the app itself is garbage..Version: 11.0.16
✓ Can’t add any new devicesMy daughter got a new iPhone 15. When you try to send an invite to her number the Secure Family’s App just crashes. No invite is sent and when you go back into the App it won’t let you resend an invite because it thinks it already has sent one. Do they even test this software before they release it? I have uninstalled the Admin app, reinstalled it and even tried it on another iPhone……same issue. This is just one of many bugs since they went to the new version of Secure Family. This one makes it basically useless for anyone of your group that gets a new device..Version: 11.0.16
✓ HORRIBLE! Not even worth the free trial.With twin boys, I just wanted an ap to shut down their data 1/2 hour before bedtime and before the bus comes...to bypass the arguing. This ap is awful. I’m still in my free trial period and will def not be paying for this piece of junk. Kids can easily disable and bypass the companion ap that has to be installed on their phones. It doesn’t work properly at all. Location is not accurate and tells me my kids are 1.8-3.8 miles away from home when they are in the house. Notifications for departure/arrival has worked once between both kids. It does not shut down internet at the designated times. Bring back smart limits....it worked and kids couldn’t manipulate it!!.Version: 3.8.5
✓ This app has location problemsOften this app pins my daughter off in the middle of a field in the country. Also, it does this when she and her phone are at home, no where near that location. It’s given me fear driven anxiety many times. Also, I cannot get the app to pin them at home, it always says near home, and then tells me they are home when they are not, they are over a block, at a friends house. Wish there was a way to make their locations more accurate and not pin them off in weird places. I will refresh it many many times and it’ll still show my daughter is off in the middle of nowhere when she is not..Version: 3.9.2
✓ Noo just noThis app is a huge invasion of privacy i think apple should take it down. When I looked on my phone i saw that i got a notification from apple that said THEY CHECKED MY LOCATION 145 TIMES LIKE FOR REAL MAN. This app just made me and my family separate and just lost all my trust. Its the apps like these thats ruins children’s lives and ruins trust family’s as it checks messages in everything and one way to make this app actually good is to just have to location thing and take out checking messages and what games they have parents can stop being lazy and do that on their own PLUS THATS THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN GAIN TRUST FROM THEIR CHILDREN. just have the location thing on like life 360..Version: 3.13.1
✓ Horrible App / Horrific ATT customer ServiceInstalled this app to monitor a child! Put in the wrong number for the “owner” of the account. App would NOT LET ME CHANGE account owner after the mistake. Called ATT customer support. After spending 1 hour they stated I had to cancel the subscription through Apple. Telephoned Apple customer service, they stated it does not show up under “paid” subscriptions so therefore nothing they can do! ATT still says it doesn’t show up on their system, even though it’s has a 30 day trial, before billing! The “free” trial WILL NOT LET YOU CANCEL IT. But I bet when the trial period is up I GET BILLED! ATT creates these “paid for solutions” and then CANNOT HELP remedy the problem. Have been a customer for 30 years, but ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! Time to LOOK for a new carrier. Be fore warned!.Version: 3.16
✓ Set-Up User Interface Needs ImprovementThe user interface, from desktop to mobile is not intuitive and the logic algorithm is off. I was unable to pair my child’s phone due to some circular logic which leaves this security issue unresolved even after being in touch with support- whose main contribution was telling me things I already knew. I think Apple should come up with an intrinsic iPhone solution to this problem of parenting in the digital age and ATT should not charge extra for this..Version: 3.8.5
✓ Doesn’t work as promisedI’ve been using this app to help protect my 13 year old son from context that he’s not mature enough to look at as well as going on questionable websites, etc. I even added a website that I specifically did not want him to go on and it didn’t stop him from doing any of that. I supposedly blocked games that I didn’t want him playing and he still was able to get right on those games as well with no problem. I really don’t know why I was paying money to use this app when it didn’t stop him from anything. The only thing it is good for is locating my son’s phone so I pretty much knew where he was, but that’s all. I’m not happy with this app..Version: 3.11.1
✓ INVASIONThis app is a complete invasion of privacy, and is a joke. There is no reason anyone should be able to go on anyone’s phone and lock apps as well as shut off the wifi. I understand blocking certain content but it gets to a point where it’s to much especially when your kid is grown all im saying is this is going to make ur kid not trust you. And all it will do is make them sneakier, at the end of the day you need to establish trust and rules with your kids so they don’t have to feel the need to do bad things and hide stuff from you. Be a if you have a healthy trustworthy relationship with your children you should trust that they will not do bad things. And if and when they do make that mistake help them through it to ensure they learn from the mistake, and don’t make it again. This app should not exist, because it is and invasion of privacy and it is barely functional..Version: 3.20
✓ Pairing the phone?The biggest problem I have is to pair your child’s/teens phone. We should be able to set parameters without having to pair their phone or possible install something on their phone which they can easily delete. The data management should just be allowed at the plan level where the parent can set times and forget it and not have to “pair” anything. The whole point is to do what’s needed whether they agree or not as a parent I think we know what’s best for kids. Pairing is making you go through the child in essence for their permission to pair? Why? I’ve had the Verizon family app which no pairing was necessary. I’ve moved to ATT for better reception but this is not good.Version: 3.16
✓ Teen can override time limitThis app has great features but my teen can override the time limit. When the secure family connection notice comes up on his phone, he presses it many times in succession very quickly. That somehow disables the connection and he can keep using his phone. I can see that he did it, after the fact, because I’ll get a text that his phone isn’t connected. It would be great to have this fixed so there is no way a family member can override the connection..Version: 3.11.1
✓ No pin on child’s phoneWhen I first discovered this app I was elated that we had finally found an app that would be able to control our kids phones and monitor them and their activity. Come to find out, your child doesn’t have to enter a pin in order to open the app and make changes. What a horrible oversight. Your child can go in and make changes and turn off the app so that you can’t see where they’re going or what they’re doing. They also have the ability to turn off the VPN without your knowledge. How this app is even being marketed right now is beyond me whoever dreamed up this app failed miserably in the most basic of protection. And the fact that they charge you a monthly fee for this inept app is laughable. If they fix that mistake it could be a great app. Otherwise it’s a waste of money..Version: 3.16
✓ TrashThis app is trash. Bring back smart limits!! At least that allowed you to block numbers, set an allowed list (for family), call/text time limits. This new app that replaced it has absolutely NOTHING for calls. Nada. Zilch. The GPS locater is never right. It finds the nearest cell tower and says your kid is there, which is usually off in some abandoned field, forest, river, or lake. INSTAPANIC! Yay! 🙄 These creators are underestimating the genius of today’s youth. They know how to disable it. They know how to switch VPNs. They know every trick and loophole to work it the way they want. Please fix this trash. AND BRING BACK SMART LIMITS SO THAT WE CAN BLOCK PHONE NUMBERS. Also, please don’t respond with your generic “we’re sorry (lies) contact us with more details..” reply because I’ve already been round and round that circus since the moment smart limits was killed, ya’ll cant fix because it’s clear the creators dont have kids or teens... Please put some parents on your testing team!.Version: 3.11.1
✓ Horrible. Doesn’t work. Save your money.What a garbage application. The precious safe family app limited my kids data usage per day and kept them from going over a data cap. This application never works. I restrict their usage and the app just stops working. For days at a time. I get text messages saying it has stopped pairing and i have to re-pair it. And then at the end of the day it stops pairing again. My data use went from controlled and always under our cap to AVERAGING 10% over our cap. The restrictions on time never mattered. The restrictions on content never mattered. This appears to be an app designed to take $8/mo from you and make you go to a higher data plan as well. 0 stars..Version: 3.8.5
✓ Problematic and Underwhelming experienceIssues I had are as follows: 1. It keeps preventing my child from receiving and sending texts!!! (Main reason I cancelled) 2. Location doesn’t always update and when it does it is not always accurate!!! (We tested with my wife when she was with my child.) 3. Why can my child uninstall this app from their phone? 4. You don’t see their texts. I appreciate the effort and idea of ATT trying to make our kids safer but I’m going to look elsewhere for a better app until this one gets fixed. From: IT Manager Dad.Version: 3.8.5
✓ Need better VPN blockingI love the ability I have with this app to block adult content and such from my child’s phone. However all of the teenagers around us have figured out that if they download a vpn app and use the other vpn they can bypass all of the controls we have set up on this app. That makes the app useless. Please add coding that requires a password before the user is able to switch to another vpn, like the app has when you try to disable it. If not, there is no need in me keeping the app..Version: 3.16
✓ The changeBefore AT&T changed or updated this app I enjoyed having it and didn’t mind paying for it. You didn’t have to have the other people on you phone plan download an app in order for you to have a round about area where they where. Yes if they download the app you get an accurate location. But when you have people on your account that aren’t wanting to download the app at least you get an area of where they are. Now you get nothing. Now you don’t even get an area. Now they have to have the app downloaded on their phones. Sorry but I stopped paying for this now. I have “grown” kids that won’t download the app and I would rather have an area that comes up as to where they are because I can figure it out from there. I don’t like the “upgrade”.Version: 11.0.16
✓ It is great app when it worksI have purchased the app as it is very useful. I mean it is useful when it works. Unfortunately it disconnects in hours to days after you set up or reconnect and you have to through process again on all phones. I have spent months on phone with customer service with multiple IT reps from ATT including their higher ups, but useless. Sometimes they even forget about you and when I have called back I was told my issue was resolved when it wasn’t. I will give it one more chance and stop subscribing..Version: 3.11.1
✓ Terrible appThis app kept crashing and not working without warning. The secure times never worked, the protection against inappropriate content that we set up rarely worked and after trouble shooting with ATT several time and almost on an every other day basis having to erase and reinstall the app on both my phone and my child’s it never fully worked for more than a few hours, finally totally NOT working at all without any warning and it wasn’t until I checked my child’s phone did I find that NON of the “secure” settings we were using were working even though it said on MY phone that it was all set up..Version: 3.11.1
✓ How to use the app after the update without companion appsHello, i'm the legacy user for the ATT secure family app. The latest update forces me to install companion apps. In your responses to other users you state that legacy users can continue to use the app without the companion apps. Pls explain how to do it. Thanks You replied that “ Legacy customers who do not use the Companion app for network location tracking can continue to network locate after the update w/o a Companion app.” The above reply appears to be incorrect. There is no way to track the phones without the companion app. Pls update your reply or explain how to track without the companion app after the update. Thnx..Version: 11.0.16
✓ Need to Require a PasscodeIt’s good in theory and I am still trying to figure this App out but after 30 minutes on my daughter’s phone she was able to delete the app and get her phone back. Anyone can open the App because it doesn’t require a passcode. I have FaceID selected but it still lets anyone open the app. My kids can go undo everything I set up. Can you please require a passcode to get into the App and fix the FaceID? You have all the systems/data right there. I am not sure why you can’t allow parents the ability to easily turn on and off features. I really want this to work. I really need this to work!!!.Version: 3.8.5
✓ App no longer works after updateIf I could give a 0 rating I would 😞 I’ve been so happy with this app for the last years but update has caused app to no longer work. I can only see my own location in real time (which I don’t need) and cannot see any of my family especially my minor child which is the reason I’ve had the app in the first place. I updated app on all devices, removed profiles and added them again and called AT&T and nothing-no way to add devices. Rep suggested I go into a store for help (which is an inconvenience), but I am not sure what else they can do that I haven’t already tried 🤷🏻♀️ maybe it’s time to cancel my subscription 😞.Version: 11.0.16
✓ Unsure of it...The app looks nice and once it’s all set up I like the features. However, I get texts multiple times a day saying that one or the other kids phones app has stopped working. Then 30 min later another text saying that it’s working again. This happens every day. It’s driving me crazy!! I blocked the alerts for the texts. I don’t get it, because I check the phones and they are fine. Hopefully glitches get fixed or I may cancel it. There’s gotta be a better one than that annoyance..Version: 3.11.1
✓ Didn’t work - deletedThis app didn’t work and is not ready for release. As a parent of a 17 year old - to be required to install a companion app on your child’s phone that is then supposed to be paired is not a realistic option. The entire premise of this app is to impose limits, controls, and oversight of a child. Any child above the age of 5 would known to just delete the companion app or take any number of steps to get around these efforts. The pairing didn’t work anyway. The capability to turn off data ALREADY exists in the standard clunky AT&T app and online. AND I already pay $$hundreds of dollars each month for this feature. Just add the ability to create schedules. For example, Google’s Free companion app to their Wifi routers allows one to create “pause” schedules for a device or collection of devices. So I have the ability to control my child’s WiFi access very simply and without paying for a service, but the simple act of turning off cellular data... lets all see if there is a way we can monetize that feature and greatly inconvenience our customers in the process. truly. Makes me consider other carriers and I have been with AT&T for more than 16 years..Version: 3.8.5
✓ They should not have apps like this aloudI am under my wife’s phone service. Without me knowing my wife put the app in my phone that iTunes has available for at&t and took the app and hidden it of my front screen so I couldn’t see it at all and controlled my whole phone by blocking my web activate and blocking my calls that were coming in and honestly took over my whole phone and I had no clue she was controlling everything on it plus took my credit card information and used it and bought things in my name. So if you are not aware of the app on your phone you are in trouble when someone can control your life this app and apps like this that a phone company sells should be banned all the way around..Version: 3.16
✓ DisappointedI’m very disappointed in this app. I wanted this app so I would be able to to keep an eye on call/message history for my kids. The time limits option would be a bonus. So I downloaded the app & set it up on my daughter’s iPad to test it out before adding it to my son’s phone. Sadly, it’s not what I thought it would be. I had high hopes this would be the AT&T version of Verizon Smart Family. But it’s missing the most important feature Monitor Usage & Activity regarding calls & texts. I feel like this app is pretty much only good for location services & maybe internet/data time limits. I’ve checked the History section a few times after visiting websites & sending text/iMessages & there is a long delay before any information pops up. I’m going to give it a week & see if it grows on me but I having a feeling I’ll be deleting it & looking for something else..Version: 3.13.1
🙂 AT&T Secure Family® parent app Positive Reviews
AT&T Secure Family® parent app works most of the time. If it is not working for you, we recommend you excersise some patience and retry later or contact AT&T Secure Family® parent app.
⛔ AT&T Secure Family® parent app Problems
