WELCOME TO SCREEN
ACCOUNTABILITY

Here are answers to your most common questions

Answers to your most common questions

• Why is Covenant Eyes changing its service?

  Covenant Eyes Internet Accountability was designed to monitor URLs, searches, and keywords for explicit content. When the way people accessed the internet was relatively simple, Internet Accountability worked extremely well.

  But then the internet started changing. The explosion of mobile devices meant people started accessing digital content through apps and relied less on browsers. Apps don’t use web addresses the way browsers do, meaning Internet Accountability, which tracks web addresses primarily, could no longer monitor content effectively.

  Another significant change in internet technology is the advent of encryption. Nearly every popular website now uses SSL encryption, meaning details of what is accessed within a website are hidden. For example, a Google search no longer reveals what search terms were used. The search could be for pornographic images, or for something completely harmless. But because search traffic is now encrypted, there is no way to know for sure. This is clearly problematic for effective accountability.

  In short, the internet is far more complex than it once was, and the way people use it has changed dramatically. As a result, tracking web addresses and URLs is no longer the most reliable way to monitor what happens on a device. That’s why we introduced Screen Accountability™, the first service of its kind. It monitors what happens on a device’s screen, providing you maximum insight into how a device is used.

• How are you protecting my privacy?

  Guarding your privacy is important to us. Covenant Eyes is never in possession of your unblurred screenshots.

  Here is how we protect your privacy:

  1. The Covenant Eyes service on your device captures a screenshot.
  2. The software looks for explicit content using advanced artificial intelligence.
  3. The software shrinks the image, blurs it, and sends it to our servers in its blurred state using HTTPS and stored using a 256-bit AES key.
  4. Screenshots in the report are blurred to protect the user’s personal information, like credit card and banking statements.

  In other words, noise, pixelation, blur, and image reduction are used in the screenshot blur process before being sent over HTTPS. This ensures that your screenshots can't be un-blurred, protecting your personal and sensitive information like financial records and medical data.

  To further prove this point, these screenshots are from a personal bank statement and a password vault from one of our managers on the Screen Accountability team.

  

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  Please read our Covenant Eyes privacy policy for more information.

  Some members have raised concerns about HIPAA, FERPA, and other laws that protect privacy. We have shared actual screenshots from our reports in this support article so that you can determine whether or not our blurring techniques are compliant with laws and regulations in your country.

• How is Screen Accountability™ better than what I’ve been using?

  Internet Accountability provides users with a lengthy, often confusing list of URLs to interpret. Sometimes it is impossible to understand what a URL is, or whether it was generated by an accountability user or simply an application’s background processes. At times, apps on a tablet or phone generate URLs that seem problematic, but that really aren’t. This means some accountability users were being held accountable for explicit content they never accessed.

  Screen Accountability™ leaves confusing URL logs behind and monitors what happens on your device’s screen instead. It harnesses the power of sophisticated AI technology to detect porn with a high degree of accuracy that is always improving. It’s faster, safer, easier to understand, and more reliable than Internet Accountability. Screen Accountability™ is accountability designed for today’s rapidly changing internet.

• How does the Screen Accountability™ technology work?
  1. We regularly capture screenshots of your devices.
  2. We use advanced artificial intelligence to detect sexual images.
  3. We highlight any screenshots that we think may be concerning in a screenshot-based report to your ally.
  4. In addition to concerning "Screenshots to Review," we will provide a random sampling of other screenshots—labeled “Device Activity”—for context.
  5. All screenshots are blurred to protect privacy. Suspected sexual content is highly blurred.
  6. All screenshots are blurred to protect privacy. Suspected sexual content is highly blurred. Users of the Covenant Eyes Filter will be switched over to our new blocking service. Known pornography is automatically blocked, and safesearch is locked on major search engines. You can read more about Covenant Eyes blocking in this support article.
• I've seen the words artificial intelligence. What does that mean?

  This is the more technical side of Screen Accountability™, but for some, it will be useful information. For several years, we've been training an image-recognition algorithm to recognize pornographic images. This advanced artificial intelligence makes decisions about the probability of pornography being present on the screen. Those decisions determine what screenshots are included in your Screen Accountability™ activity reports.

• How is filtering different with Screen Accountability™?

  While our legacy filtering solution was helpful, it was challenging to set up, and often made browsing feel sluggish. As a result, we have a new solution that is easier to understand, and much faster. Our members often used our filter because they want to stay away from pornography. And that’s exactly what we aim to do. We are moving to a blocking service powered by CleanBrowsing that automatically blocks known pornography domains, while providing protections most people desire, like custom block and allow lists, SafeSearch on Google and Bing, and YouTube Restricted Mode everywhere on the device. Please view our support article for more details.

• Will Screen Accountability™ work on my iPhone & other iOS devices?

  Yes, but reporting looks a little different. The Covenant Eyes web browser app will use screen monitoring for all activity within the app. Outside of the Covenant Eyes browser app, we still provide device-wide monitoring and reporting of domain activity, and Safe Search in Google and Bing. Filter users will benefit from whole-device domain-based blocking that prevents access to all known porn sites from any app on the device. Covenant Eyes iOS users should also set up Apple’s Screen Time restrictions to disable the Safari browser and secure the device for maximum accountability.

• What do Screen Accountability™ Reports look like?

  Each report has up to two sections with screenshots. Any concerning screenshots are compiled together at the top of the report in a section titled “Screen Activity for Review”. Another section, titled “Device Activity”, will provide a random sampling of screenshots from the reporting period to indicate that the software is working and help provide activity context.

  People often wonder if that means we will be sending pornographic images to allies. The answer is “no.” We’ve worked hard on the blurring aspect of this technology, testing it with users, and found the right balance between "seeing enough" and "not knowing/seeing too much."

  Please see our Reports support article for more details.

• Will personal, explicit photos between spouses be reported?

  The short answer is, yes. Screen Accountability™ is designed to detect explicit content with a high degree of accuracy. There is no way for the software to distinguish whether the explicit content was from a spouse or a problematic source. As a result, we recommend that spouses who send explicit images to each other use only one another as accountability Allies so that private content between spouses is not sent to a third party.

• Will Screen Accountability™ cost more than what I currently pay?

  No, switching to Screen Accountability™ will not increase the cost that you currently pay.