Folks are asking me to sound off on the Saturn app. If you have Saturn concerns, please consider this blog post:
The Saturn App
Saturn is an iOS app, intended for high school students. Saturn can help kids manage their schedules, and it also has social media functions, too. Teen users may enjoy using Saturn to announce their activities, coordinate with their peers, share their schedules and communicate quickly with their schoolmates. Students are allowed to input user photos and other personal info, as well as link to their other social media accounts (TikTok, Snapchat, even Venmo).
Saturn has been around since 2018, and was started by a couple of college kids. But they acquired a significant chunk of money from Jeff Bezos, Ashton Kutcher and other investors, and their company took off. The app seems to be popular and work very well, but shows no signs of arriving on the Android scene…
Saturn Concerns
In past and present years, parents and school officials have raised concerns over Saturn. Does this app expose our kids to online threats? How bad are the risks for letting my children onto this app? Should we limit or ban this app?
These questions are legitimate. Sharing personal info online always carries some amount of risk. But let’s not make snap decisions about it. If Saturn concerns you, I’d like you to learn more about the app, consider the current state of its security, and make your own personal judgment call on it.
One worrisome piece of news emerged this month, from a parent who claimed he’d installed the app and crossed some privacy boundaries with it. He said that by fudging some sign-up data, he was able to see other students’ schedules and pictures. This parent didn’t want to do anything harmful! He was instead demonstrating the lax security of the app, and encouraging more mindfulness about our teenagers’ online safety. Thank you, sir!
In response to this news, Saturn developers quickly changed the app, and announced their security improvements. It was no longer possible to do what the concerned parent had done. Presently, Saturn users have a stricter sign-up and verification process. If you don’t “get verified“, you can still use the app for calendaring, but verified users and their data will not be shown to any unverified users.
Testing the New Security
So I did similar to that concerned parent. I installed the app and tried to use it, even though I do not have a highschooler in my home. Here’s what I encountered:
Saturn asked for my birthdate. I lied. I put in some DOB that suggested I was 40-something years old. It accepted it and moved on.
The next requirement was my mobile number. I had to give it a way of texting me an access code. So I cooperated and then Saturn welcomed me in. But I would not have gotten any further without giving it a real textable number.
Then I immediately set about trying to see other people’s info. Could I see someone else’s calendar? Could I start chatting with other students? No, I met with these screens:
I tried to get verified as if I were a student. The next screen asked me to sign in with my school email. I didn’t have one of those, but I sure have plenty of Microsoft and Google emails, so I tried using some of those. Saturn quickly rebuked me:
At this point, I stopped trying to gain access. For me to penetrate these defenses, it was pretty clear I would have to go beyond the pale. I would have to compromise other systems in order to gain access to Saturn’s sensitive info. Stopping here, I could only see and use my own calendar space in the Saturn app.
Summary Judgment
Take all of this with a grain of salt. I cannot possibly advise every parent on how to best run their household and their technology. Please take what you want from all of this and use it any way you see fit.
I look at Saturn and I see some amount of risk. I look at all online social apps that way. Sharing personal info of any kind on the internet can be both useful and hazardous. Rather than admonish people to never do it, I have to be more practical and urge you to be mindful of where and when you do it.
Mindful = judgmental. When I judge Saturn, with just this small amount of testing and probing, I think it’s got some good security in place. Is it perfect? No, a determined bad guy could get in and cause harm. But that goes for any social-technology construct. Facebook. Snapchat. Discord. When I start comparing Saturn against all of the other apps that I see young people using, I judge Saturn to have above-average security. My opinion is that your teens are in far more danger using Facebook and Instagram. It is far easier to game the system and cause harm on the other platforms we use.
Whether you allow or prevent your teen from using Saturn is up to you. But after you make that choice, I encourage you to think about all of the other ways your son or daughter uses the internet. We can’t afford to be hyper-focused on one app with the larger issue of Internet Safety looming over our heads. There are many online resources to keep your child educated and safe on the internet. Perhaps the Saturn app is here to deliver a teachable moment amongst the many lessons in your child’s digital upbringing.
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