Here Is How SafeStream Guardian Was Born

Why a developer dad decided to build a secure, P2P, and free alternative to parental control apps.

By Francesco Costantino, Creator of SafeStream Guardian

Let me guess: you are parents and you've looked for an app to monitor your children's online activity. You found dozens of options. All promise "total security", but almost all of them have two things in common that I couldn't stomach:

1. They cost too much: Monthly subscriptions of €10, €15 or more, forever.
2. Zero real Privacy: To work, these apps take all your child's data (location, web history, watched videos) and upload them to their cloud servers.

As a developer, I asked myself: "Do I really want my son's habits and movements to be saved in a database of a third-party company, maybe on the other side of the world? And what if that database gets breached?"

The answer was NO. So, I spent the last few months building the alternative that didn't exist.

Introducing SafeStream Guardian: Security Without "Big Brother"

SafeStream Guardian was born from a radical yet simple idea: your family's data must stay in the family.

I designed the app using a technology called P2P (Peer-to-Peer). Imagine an invisible, encrypted thread directly connecting your phone to your child's phone. When you press "Sync", information travels through this secure tunnel. It never passes through a central archive. It is never saved on my servers. The database is your phone. Period.

Not Just Privacy: A Better User Experience

Parental control apps are often ugly, full of unreadable text lists. For SafeStream, I wanted something different. I wanted to understand what my son was watching on TikTok and YouTube, not just read a title.

I created the "Activity Reel" interface: You can browse your child's video history exactly as if you were on a social network. Scroll, watch previews, understand the context. It's intuitive, fast, and visual.

Why Is It Free? (100% Transparency)

It is often said: "If it's free, you are the product". With SafeStream, this is not true. I am an independent developer, not a multinational corporation selling advertising data.

The app is free because I believe digital safety should be accessible to everyone. However, maintaining the secure connection servers (called TURN servers, which are used to help the two phones find each other when not on the same Wi-Fi) has a real cost for me.

To cover these costs without asking for a subscription, I devised an honest system:

• Text and Location Monitoring: Always Free.
• High Resolution Screenshot Downloads: Works on "Credits". You get free credits every day. If they run out and you want to download more images, you can watch a short video ad to recharge them.

In this way, the app remains sustainable, free for you, and private for everyone.

We Don't Build Walls, We Build Bridges

There is one last thing that distinguishes SafeStream. It is not an app to "block everything". I believe that banning TikTok or YouTube in 2025 is impossible and counterproductive.

SafeStream doesn't block, it illuminates. It gives you the tools to know what's happening, so you can sit down next to your children and say: "Hey, I saw you like that YouTube channel, what is it about?" Let's transform control into dialogue.

Try It in Preview

I worked hard (often at night!) to bring SafeStream to light. The app will be publicly available on the Google Play Store in about 10 days.

If you want to be the first to try it and help me with your feedback, join the waiting list below.

Thank you for your trust. Your data is safe, because it is only yours.