KidsWifi offers parents plug-in Internet control

WATERLOO — It began with the Internet plight of a frustrated friend of a friend.

“Her son typed in ‘Halloween costume’ in the search bar on Google,” Waterloo’s John Stix explained. “And something came up that was really bad.”

And now, a year or so later, we are pitched a $99 solution to such parental web worries.

It’s a little made-in-China white box parents can plug in the wall that gives them total control of their kids’ Internet time and web content within the home.

It comes from a new entity called KidsWifi, a Waterloo-based tech startup co-founded by Stix and other deep thinkers from Fibernetics, a telecommunications company headquartered in Cambridge.

It’s being endorsed by Justin Bieber’s little sister Jazmyn. The eight-year-old is expected to attend a KidsWifi launch at Wildcraft in Waterloo on Thursday night as the product’s kid ambassador.

Cheryl Hickey, host of television show “ET Canada” and a mother of two, is billed as the startup’s official spokesperson in the parental battle against unfiltered content.

“It really is a major issue,” said Stix, himself a father and grandfather.

“Children are suffering with the content they’re seeing. Parents, we don’t have eyes in the back of our heads,” he said. “This is made by parents, for parents, to protect children.”

Stix says the device can be set up in two minutes flat.

It piggybacks onto the existing Wi-Fi in the home but generates its own separate Wi-Fi network. Once KidsWifi is up and running, the parent can change the password on the existing main signal. Then, KidsWifi becomes the only option for the child.

Parents can use the device itself to adjust the appropriate limits of Internet use.

“It’s customizable,” Stix said. “It puts the control back in the hands of parents.

“You can have software-based solutions like Net Nanny and whatnot. But, you know, a kid can just uninstall that, throw it in the trash bin and it’s off the computer.”

But KidsWifi, launched in North America via the website www.kidswifi.com, has no setting that will ensure children will make their beds or do the dishes.

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” Stix said.