Imagine trying to replicate the motion of the wax in a lava lamp by using modeling clay. It’s very difficult to make modeling clay move at all, let alone have it mimic motion. Holding someone accountable can feel a lot like that. With people jumping around between work computers and home computers, smartphones, and tablets, it can feel a little intimidating to try to figure out when and why a person may have stumbled online.
That’s why 2016 will be the most ambitious year yet for Covenant Eyes. We’re breaking new ground in research and technology, all to provide better service to our users.
Better Education
Battling pornography, whether as a parent, as an individual who is struggling, or as a leader equipping others, is challenging. This is why Covenant Eyes invests so much in providing you educational articles, blog posts, e-books and videos. In 2015, we released an updated version of Porn and Your Husband, and two new e-books, More than Single: Finding Purpose Beyond Porn, and Fight Porn in Your Church.
Better Reporting
Covenant Eyes uses proprietary techniques to classify website visit types such as “visited” or “secondary.” However, sometimes we don’t know how to classify something. Through improved techniques, we found a way to classify more websites than ever before, making your reports cleaner and easier to understand.
If you are a Covenant Eyes Accountability Partner, you are interested in the sites your partner visits, but you likely want to know what led them to that site, what they did there and what happened afterwards. We’re almost ready to add Incident Reports to the Accountability Report to show you what happened before Highly Mature content was accessed. Was the user searching for inappropriate content, or did they stumble on it accidentally? This information should help create better accountability conversations about intention as well as help identify common triggers that can be avoided in the future.
One of the biggest criticisms we’ve received for our accountability app for iPhone is that we don’t provide any accountability or filtering for the Safari browser. We’ve been working on a new, patent-pending way to expand our service to provide better coverage across your entire device, including Safari.
Better Service
Covenant Eyes just opened a second location here in Owosso, MI. More than 100 people attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony, including media, local elected officials and leaders, and Covenant Eyes staff members. The location will house nearly 40 customer service representatives to provide you with shorter wait times and even more personalized service. We plan to use this site to work through some of the kinks in operating multiple locations so we can open offices across the country and possibly internationally.
Lastly, we have heard countless requests for improved reporting of photos and videos. Using a new process built off state-of-the-art technology, we are thrilled to announce that we have developed a new, patent-pending image recognition software. Short-term, this means better reporting of inappropriate images…and it has some long-term implications for video as well.
Want to see this in action? There is a demo that shows some of the capabilities of this new system in the video above. The moment of the kiss is flagged as possibly inappropriate (represented by the dip downward). Compare that to the analysis of a pornographic video, where the line stays at the bottom of the graph (“pornographic content”) until the very end, which is presumably when the clothing goes back on. Remember, this isn’t necessarily how it will appear on your Accountability Report…but it’s exciting, and we wanted you to share our excitement.
We are still researching this technology, and are in the process of deciding how to report it and integrate it into our software and apps, but we’re getting close. Look for an announcement with more details this summer.
We’re excited to offer you these exciting updates, and we’ve got even more planned. Leave us a comment to tell us what features you’re most excited about or what you’d like us to pursue.
Any updates on the status of the system wide coverage? I noticed the latest update didn’t include that.
Hi, Dustin – a large, final testing group is using our most recent build. I truly hope we’re close! Believe me, we will let everyone know when we get there.
Chris
I noticed that the VPN blocks the internal browsers when using cellular network, but when connected to wifi the internal browsers load up. Are they monitored for accountability reports?
Hi, Jack – can I ask you to send an email of your question directly to one of the developers? His name is Ryan, and you can reach him at ryan.sherrett@covenanteyes.com.
Thanks! Chris
I’ve used it for a few days now and all works great except VPN wont allow phone to connect to wifi. Just stays on cellular connection. Only way to get it to switch to wifi is to toggle VPN off in settings manually which then quickly turns right back on and allows phone to connect to wifi. Additionally this then shows up in reports as if you’ve uninstalled filter on phone which isn’t actually true. Otherwise once fixed this is an incredible piece of engineering.
Hi, Curtis – can I ask you to send an email of your question directly to one of the developers? His name is Ryan, and you can reach him at ryan.sherrett@covenanteyes.com.
Thanks! Chris
Would like to be added as a beta tester, if it’s not too late. Thanks!
Hi, Jon – I’ll let the development team know. Thanks for being willing.
Hi there,
Just looking for an update: Has the nasty bug been fixed yet? It is now June.
Sending out an email to a group of hopefully final beta testers this week. Thanks, Bob.
Hey Covenant Eyes,
It’s now April and you’ve been on the cusp of a release for ages now – any further update? And I second the notion of having a more recent new blog post with more regular updates :)
Thanks so much!
Hi, Jim – we are equally frustrated by the bugs we keep running in to with the release of our iPhone enhanced accountability. I recently added a blanket statement to the top of the blog to try and convey our current position. Thank you.
Chris
Any updates on the software? It’s now been over a year since announced. I would have thought beta testing would have started by now.
Hi, Al – thanks for your note. We have been beta testing for about 6 months now and are dealing with a really nasty bug that has been discovered. That’s really the only item standing between us and launch. I know it’s been a while. We aren’t happy with how long it has taken either, but we don’t want to release junk to our people either. Hang tight!
Peace, Chris
Is there any chance that the Covenant Eyes’ current IOS browser can get an update? It is frustrating that the browser will say that there’s a connection problem, when in reality the browser crashed trying to load a website. Version 3.1.4, and iOS 10.2.1
Also, after praying on it for a couple of months, I’m returning to the Android phones. While I do believe that there will be better iOS coverage in the future, I feel like with all the walls you guys continue to hit, it may be still in the long term future that it’ll be released. It was after reading on the notes for Android, that accountability is far more greater now than it used to be. It’s going to be expensive for me to break my iPhone lease ($200.00) but it’ll be worth it.
Hi, Kenneth – thanks for your note. We’re working on a nasty bug that is preventing us from releasing our iOS enhanced accountability service after about 6 months of Beta testing. I sure hope we can get that out soon. For your specific questions about the current browser crashing, that shouldn’t be happening. Have you talked to Customer Service? That’s not “normal.”
As for your conclusions about Android, that’s your call, but now that filtering has been added, the Android platform is better than ever for staying clear of the filth.
Peace, Chris
It would be nice if management would do another blog post for this topic since this one is a year old and maybe provide an “official update” since it has so much interest?
I know our family has been waiting for CE to launch this solution but we are considering other options since no one knows if this project is even still active (since no one from CE makes any mention unless through this 1 year old blog post).
Sometimes a little snippet of information once a month goes a long way in helping customers know you’re working hard on something that you promised but couldn’t deliver on?
Thanks.
Hello, Matt – thank you for your patience. I just added this to the top of the blog post: “March 2017 Update: It has been over a year since we first mentioned our new technology for the iPhone that will provide enhanced accountability. We have been in Beta testing for over six months on the technology and we have discovered a few difficult issues that we are diligently trying to resolve. We cannot put a timeframe on when the issues will be fixed, but we are working hard toward that end. We sincerely apologize for the delay. We know that it has been frustrating for our customers who are patiently waiting. We too are frustrated. But we are not giving up and hope to find a resolution soon.”
Peace, Chris
Any more news on the upcoming release. Very interested in getting it implemented in my network and devices.
Hello, Chad – thank you for your patience and I just added this update to the blog post: “March 2017 Update: It has been over a year since we first mentioned our new technology for the iPhone that will provide enhanced accountability. We have been in Beta testing for over six months on the technology and we have discovered a few difficult issues that we are diligently trying to resolve. We cannot put a timeframe on when the issues will be fixed, but we are working hard toward that end. We sincerely apologize for the delay. We know that it has been frustrating for our customers who are patiently waiting. We too are frustrated. But we are not giving up and hope to find a resolution soon.”
Peace, Chris