stand for student safety
Bark School Affiliate Program
Supports Student Online Safety and Provides Funding
Become our partner and support a safe environment for your students
and receive passive income from family membership fees
generated by your parent community outreach efforts.
Stand with us for student safety.
www.bark.us
Bark - Monitors, Detects and Alerts Parents to Online Dangers
Bark is a parental software tool powered by advanced machine learning algorithms that proactively
alert parents to common dangers, including cyberbullying, sexting, drug use, Internet predators, depression and suicidal thoughts - and then provides expert recommendations on how to address them. Bark
reduces the time-consuming activity parents go through trying to keep up with all the posts, texts and
emails their children send daily.
Parents sign up at bark.us and create their family account for a free one month trial period. Once the
trial period ends, the cost is $9/family/month - includes unlimited children. The parent then creates a
profile for each child and connects their social media, email accounts and messaging apps. Bark
analyzes text, and both images and video associated with a message -- including layered text added
after the fact.
Bark was developed by a tech veteran and parent to help protect children online while providing parents
with the ability to convey that they trust and respect their child. Since Bark only alerts parents to potentially dangerous activity, the harmless chatter that children often share is left private. Bark recommends
that parents explain the monitoring service, establish a family technology contract, and work with their
children to set up their individual profile. The child’s username and password are entered to allow Bark
to monitor the account.
Setting up a child’s profile takes 2-5 minutes on Bark’s platform. Simply click on the account that needs
to be connected, enter child’s username and password, click ‘sign in’ and Bark’s algorithms monitor the
child’s data stream for that account.
Bark supports these current platforms:
54% of Bark kids
experience digital communication that includes at least
one of the following issues; cyberbullying, sexual content,
predatory activity and depression and suicidal ideation.
Instagram
Snapchat
Facebook
Twitter
Vine
Ask.fm
Discord
Google+
YouTube
Tumblr
Flickr
Gmail
Outlook/Hotmail
Yahoo! Mail
Comcast Mail
Pinterest
GroupMe
WhatsApp (iOS only)
iOS Text Messaging/Photos/Videos
Android Text Messaging/ Photos/Videos
This list continues to grow with the changing
landscape of social media and popular platforms
will be added as needed.
Affiliate Program
Bark partners with school districts to help spread the word about Bark’s online safety solution to their
parent community and then provides an ongoing 25% revenue share of family membership fees
generated by a school district’s efforts. Quarterly payments are made to affiliates for the funds raised for the
previous quarter once reaching the $50 minimum.
Bark provides each affiliate with a unique referral code for both online and print promotion. Parents who
sign up using these unique referral codes will automatically have their accounts connected to the appropriate affiliate.
District Responsibilities
Districts are responsible for the coordination of communication efforts to their parent communities
explaining Bark’s services and the ability for the district to raise funds through family memberships.
Consider utilizing Bark as part of your district’s policies and procedures for student safety; it provides an
engagement tool a district can share with their parent community. Bark gives parents an early
detection system for digital issues and can help head off major school-wide issues before they spread.
Your district determines how funds are used. Fund use examples are to: create scholarships for families
who may not be able to afford Bark; support ongoing parent education events on internet safety; or develop
student-to-student mentoring programs to curb bullying.
COPPA Laws
On July 1, 2013, the FTC updated Child Online Privacy and
Protection Act (COPPA) to bring laws originally enacted in
1998 to the ever-changing internet. The original COPPA
laws were created to help ensure that digital brands
weren’t taking advantage of new marketing channels to
target kids under 13. With the power of the internet and
innovation, they were able to easily collect personal information from kids, track their behavior online and ultimately
tailor more personalized marketing campaigns to them.
In short, if a parent adds a child under the age of 13, Bark
is not legally allowed to monitor their accounts unless they
have verifiable parental consent in the form of a credit card
added to the parent account.
Security
Bark uses SSL encryption on the website to present data
to parents and their children. All data analyzed is stored
within an encrypted database, including backups. Security
is a primary concern for us. Parents can rest easy knowing
their data is secure.
Terms of Service for Parents
As with most websites and apps, Bark includes a Terms of
Service. Parents must actively agree to them when signing
up for our services. Our Terms of Service are structured to
help reduce potential issues and our affiliates are covered
under these terms
Bark School Affiliate Program
Supports Student Online Safety and Provides Funding
Benefits to your school district include:
• Supports safe environment for students and broadens engagement with parents
• Provides passive income for schools and can be implemented at any time
• Uses existing communication channels with parents to easily promote program
Benefits to your parent community include:
• Unobtrusively connects parents with their children’s digital lives
• Fosters dialogue between parent and child about online dangers
• Time-saving approach to ensuring their children are safe online
Benefits to your students include:
• Reinforces school’s anti-bullying policies, promoting school safety concerns
• Respects children’s online privacy, only informs parents of a potential issue
• Promotes a sense of security knowing parents can step in when there’s a problem
With 200 committed families using Bark’s services every month for a year,
your District will receive $5,500 annually!
Your District determines how funds are used.
Questions? Contact Tara Noftsier, VP of Education, at [email protected]
Sign up at www.bark.us