Vault apps and your kids: What you need to know

Innocent looking apps on your kids' smartphones might be anything but.

Bill McGinty, WCNC 10:24 PM. EST May 10, 2016

File photo (Photo: WCNC)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Texting and sharing pictures, we do it every day.

Sugar Manchanda knows it's a big part of what her teenagers are doing every day on the phone. But, it's what parents don't know could cause bigger problems.

They're called vault or ghost apps, and one expert says "it looks like a calculator app". Police say they're apps used to hide pictures, texts and videos your kids don't want you to see.

One police officer said, "You'd be surprised the number of apps that come up, that are free, available for anybody to use, that are used to hide things on their phone."

You can find them on the App Store or Google Play Store-- just search the words "hidden apps" and up pops dozens of options. Some of them look like typical apps already on your phone, like a calculator or camera. But put in a password, and it unlocks the app, giving you a place to store everything from pictures to text messages in secret.

Even Sugar was shocked, saying, "It's shocking, it's definitely shocking."

While most parents are in the dark, vault apps are becoming more mainstream, and times have definitely changed. 

Parents need to tell their kids that, "first of all it's illegal, if you're under the age of 18, it's considered child pornography, whether you take it of yourself, or you have it of another person under the age of 18." 

And teens are setting themselves up to be criminally charged.

And, if you receive sexually explicit photos and keep it on your phone, now you are in possession of child pornography.

So what can parents can do? Experts say check out any new apps, especially those that have accessed the phone's camera. Look for redundancy-- like two calculators on a phone, or use parental controls to control what your child downloads. Most importantly, communicate with your kids.

Families with iPhones can screen apps before they're downloaded to their child's phone with the "ask to buy" feature. When a child wants to download an app, it sends a request to the parent's phone. Android phones have similar features.

Copyright 2016 WCNC

Source: Vault apps and your kids: What you need to know