Apple’s text-control tech isn’t about stopping sexting

A surprising number of observers have asserted that Apple is aiming to help concerned parents crack down on inappropriate text messages — such as “sexts” — among teens with the company’s recently approved SMS-monitoring patent. Yes, Apple has garnered a reputation for prudishness, but if the company or parents truly believe they can succeed in eliminating racy text exchanges among hormone-addled youths, they’re in for severe disappointment.

The type of filtering Apple appears to envision involves flagging text messages that contain specific words from a predefined list. A message containing, say, a four-letter favorite might end up censored (“What the **** happened to my last message?”) or entirely blocked, and the parent could receive an alert informing them that little Timmy has a dirty mouth — er, set of texting fingers.

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Thing is, this sort of technology isn’t particularly new. Security vendors have rolled out DLP (data-loss prevention) products designed to identify and stop emails and IMs containing sensitive information, such as trade secrets, client lists, and the like. Similarly, collaboration and entertainment media, including discussion threads and real-time games, sometimes have filters to censor words that, in certain contexts, could be deemed offensive.

More important, the kind of technology outlined by Apple isn’t entirely effective in and of itself, whether it’s applied to a teenager “sexting,” an employee divulging snippets of sensitive data, or the company CEO carelessly messaging off-color racist jokes. A cheap romance novel demonstrates how easily one can engage in hot and heavy banter without using the more obvious words pertaining to particular acts or parts of the human anatomy. Simple code — perhaps words in place of numbers to relay a Social Security number or credit card number — can mask sensitive information. And it’s possible to offend a group of people based on race, religion, or ethnicity without using choice derogatory words.

Also, inevitably, offensive words are left out, or words that are perfectly clean and innocent in particular contexts (such as terms for female dog, cat, detective, poking oneself with a needle, a fool, types of birds, and so on) could be censored or the text blocked.

That said, the technology could have some potentially useful and interesting applications outside of creating a false sense of security (and responsible parenting). Consider, for example, retail or customer service: A customer wandering a grocery or department store could text “Levi’s” or “tomato paste” to a store’s automated texting service and receive a reply such as “third floor” or “aisle 7.”

Or what happens if you combine this sort of technology with GPS? A tourist could text “directions to zoo” to his hotel or a local Chamber of Commerce provider and get, in response, specific directions starting from where he or she is standing. At an amusement park, similarly, you could text “bathroom” and get directions to the nearest facilities.

In education, too, this technology has applications. Texts sent from students who are supposed to be immersed in a foreign language program — but who persist in using their native tongue — could received responding texts demanding they be rewritten “en Español” or “en Français.”

Those applications are certainly plausible. With more time and added intelligence, a user could have a personalized concierge, tour guide, and/or financial adviser at his or her texting fingertips.

Any parents or employers pinning their hopes on this sort of monitoring technology to prevent undesirable behavior would likely be disappointed by — or blissfully ignorant — to its ineffectiveness. No technology is powerful enough to keep teens from being teens nor criminals from being criminals — except the most inept of the lot.

Maybe Apple has something interesting up its sleeve here. We’ll have to wait and see.

This article, “Apple’s text-control tech isn’t about stopping sexting,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog.