mssgs introduces parental controls that exclude message content by design

Brummen, the Netherlands, 21 August 2026

mssgs, the independent Dutch group chat application, has released a Parent Center: a set of parental controls that allow a parent to see who their child communicates with, how long they are connected each day, and whether they share their location. The contents of a child’s messages remain inaccessible to a parent by design.

The feature is available in the desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux from version 14.0.30, and reaches iPhone and iPad with the next App Store release. It is included in mssgs at no cost, and all data is hosted in the European Union.

The design followed a single requirement: that a young person would accept the arrangement rather than work around it. Each of the decisions described below follows from that requirement. The link is requested by the child, it shares nothing until a parent accepts it, either party may end it, and message content is never made available.

mssgs · Parent Center

Parent Center Family links and safety

My Family Alerts My Parents

Your connect code Give this code to your child. They enter it in their own app to ask to join your family.

K7HQ 4M2P Copy

This code stays the same. Only share it with your own family.

Requests A request gives them no access until you accept it.

N @noor noor wants to be part of your family. Requested 19 August 2026 Deny Accept

Children Open a child to see who they talk to, how long they are connected, and their location sharing.

S @sem Linked since 12 August 2026

The child requests the link; the parent accepts it

Linking is initiated by the child in every case. A parent opens the Parent Center and finds a connect code that is short, easy to read aloud, and stable for the account. The child enters that code in their own app, selects the parent’s account, and sends a request.

Until the parent accepts, the link shares nothing at all. Acceptance is the point at which visibility begins, and it is always an explicit action. Either party may remove the link afterwards: a child is not bound to a link they created, and a parent who removes one immediately stops receiving any information.

That sequence is deliberate. An arrangement a young person sets up themselves, and whose scope they can see before it takes effect, is one a family can discuss. An arrangement introduced without their knowledge is one they will learn to circumvent.

Metadata only, never message content

The overview a parent opens contains metadata only. This is not a policy applied on top of the interface: no endpoint in the feature returns message content, so there is nothing a future screen could display in error.

A connected parent can see:

• Who their child exchanges messages with, by name, but not what was said.
• How long their child was connected to mssgs on each day.
• Whether location sharing is enabled, and how far each share reaches.
• Events as they occur: a new friend, a community joined, a location share, a report received.

mssgs · Parent Center · @sem

Parent Center Family links and safety

My Family Alerts My Parents

Back S @sem Linked since 12 August 2026

You can see who your child talks to and how long they are connected, never the contents of their messages.

Friends The people your child messages. You can see who they are, not what was said.

N@noor L@lars Y@yara

Connected time

Day Connected Active

2026-08-193h 12m1h 04m

2026-08-181h 47m38m

2026-08-174h 05m1h 22m

Connected time counts how long the app kept a connection, including time in the background. It is not the same as your phone’s Screen Time and will usually read higher.

Location sharing Location sharing is on

lars can see this from anywhere in the world. 18 August 2026, 20:14

noor can see this from up to 5 km away. 17 August 2026, 16:02

You can see whether sharing is on and how wide each share reaches. You cannot see where your child is.

Connected time rather than screen time

The time figure is deliberately not described as screen time. It is measured from the connection the application maintains to the mssgs gateway, which continues while the device is in a pocket, and it will therefore read higher than the figure reported by Apple’s Screen Time.

Describing it as screen time would have been the simpler option and the incorrect one, since a parent comparing the two figures would reasonably conclude that one of them was wrong. The overview labels the figure “connected time”, places an idle-discounted “active” column beside it, and explains the difference directly below the table.

Location reported as reach, not as position

The location section reports whether sharing is enabled and who can see it, and states each share in terms of its reach: “can see this from up to 5 km away”, or “can see this from anywhere in the world”. Shares are ordered by reach, so the widest appears first.

It does not report where the child is. There is no map, no coordinates and no place name. The events that reach a parent carry a range band and nothing further. This is a data minimisation requirement for minors, and it is enforced on the server at the last point before an event is stored.

Alerts describe events, not conversations

Four events reach a parent as an alert: their child added a friend, joined a community, shared their location, or received a report. Each alert records that the event occurred and who was involved. None carries a message, and a location alert carries a reach rather than a place.

Alerts are stored per event and marked as read per parent, so two parents linked to the same child each retain their own read state.

My Parents

Some features are waiting on a parent Until a parent accepts your request, new conversations, joining servers, posting publicly and location sharing stay switched off.

A parent can see who you talk to and how long you are connected. They can never read your messages.

Ask a parent to connect 1. Find your parent Search by username… 2. Enter their connect code ABCD1234 Send request

Alerts

New friend Now friends with lars @sem

Location shared Visible from anywhere in the world @sem

Joined a server Joined Brummen Skate Crew @sem

Alerts say that something happened. They never say what was said.

Age bands rather than dates of birth

On iOS, mssgs requests an age band through Apple’s Declared Age Range framework and stores only that band: under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, or 18 and over. A date of birth is never stored, and the server route that receives the band is unable to accept one.

An account whose band is unknown is treated as under 13 rather than as an adult. Accounts belonging to minors begin with restricted defaults: new conversations, joining communities, posting publicly and location sharing remain disabled until a parent link becomes active. The child’s own screen states this plainly, on the same screen that allows them to resolve it.

Most parental controls make the same trade. They give a parent access to a child’s messages and describe that as safety. We did not want to build that product. A parent should be able to see the shape of their child’s week, who is in it, how long it lasted, how widely a location is shared, and stop there. Supervision and surveillance are not the same thing, and young people can tell them apart.

René van Sweeden, founder of mssgs

Part of a wider safety release

The Parent Center was released alongside the remainder of the safety work. Members can report a message, a direct message, a community or a user, and the reported content is retained as it appeared so that it can still be reviewed if it is later deleted. A Reports section records what a member has reported and how each report was handled. Blocking is available from a profile, a message or a direct message, with a list of blocked accounts in settings. Community moderators have a Reported Content queue showing each report with its review deadline and the current state of the vote.

Communities in mssgs are moderated by their own members rather than by a central team, and that queue is where the work is carried out.

Availability

The Parent Center is available in Settings in the desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux from version 14.0.30, released on 4 August 2026, and was extended on 5 August 2026 with the location sharing detail described above. It reaches iPhone and iPad with the next App Store release.

mssgs is free to use, carries no advertising, and hosts all data in the European Union. Downloads for every platform are available at mss.gs/en/downloads.