Syncing for your child’s safety

With smartphones these days we have the ability to backup photos and videos to the cloud, but we generally don’t do this until we’re back at home and on a computer. Most WiFi cloud syncing defaults to only sync while plugged in or while WiFi is on.

I’m saying your child here, but this advice is for anyone.

This is good on the battery life, and easy on the pockets of those without an unlimited data plan, but what happens when your child captures something that might become a threat to them? A gang related beating, a robbery, police who don’t particularly want to be filmed beating a suspect to death, etc?

In most scenarios and with most cloud based services syncing will begin when a new file is created and closed. This means videos that you’re recording will not start to sync until you finish recording, however photos made from stills on the screens will sync immediately.

In the event you’ve recorded something and you’ve got it in the cloud you’re a much larger threat dead than alive. If police, robbers, etc, take the phone it’s pushing that video to the cloud until they stop it. Photos generally sync within a second or two, videos it all depends on the quality and length and the cel provider.

You’ll spend a bit more battery to sync instantly if you’re out and about, but it could be a good bargaining chip for you or your child in the event of becoming an accidental witness, and if you just happen to lose the phone for other reasons you’ve got the last set of pictures and videos sitting safe elsewhere so there’s no loss other than the device itself.

That, and maybe your Angry Birds save game.

A synced photo account accessible by the parents might also prevent your teen from ending up on the sex offender registry, although that’s going to be an awkward conversation.

You’ll also need to keep on top of data usage if you’re paying for it, but then again how many photos and videos is your kid planning to take out of WiFi under normal circumstances?