Who actually holds your parent's location history?
Many trackers run on licensed white-label platforms. The name on the box is frequently not the company storing the data.
Organised by who's wearing them — children, teens, adults, seniors, people living with dementia, lone workers. Every device, every technology, every companion app, and the question almost nobody asks: what happens to the data.
A wearable that's perfect for a marathon runner is useless for someone with dementia. We organise everything around the wearer, because that's the only thing that decides which device is right.
GPS watches, SOS buttons, first phones-on-the-wrist. What survives a school year, what lasts a school day, and what parents actually need versus what's sold to them.
Explore kids' wearablesLocation sharing, crash detection, driving safety and the balance between oversight and autonomy. Often the phone already does it — we say when.
Explore teen wearablesSmartwatches, fitness and health sensors, sleep, ECG and SpO2 — through to medical alerts and fall detection as needs change. We organise by need rather than birthday, because people stay active far longer than the old 65+ categories assume.
Explore adult & senior wearablesWandering alerts, geofencing, tamper resistance, two-way voice. Over 60% of people with dementia wander; 94% are found within 1.5 miles — the exact range a device changes.
Explore dementia wearablesMan-down detection, panic alerts, satellite SOS, working and travelling beyond coverage. Two watches can both claim "satellite SOS" and promise very different things — and consumer devices often aren't enough for occupational duty of care.
Explore solo & remote safetyContinuous glucose, cardiac monitoring, epilepsy alerts, oxygen. What's clinically validated, what's wellness, and what a clinician will actually accept data from.
Explore health monitoringA wearable on a child or an elderly parent produces some of the most sensitive data that exists — continuous location, health signals, daily routine. Almost no publication asks who holds it, where it's stored, who it's sold to, or what happens when the company behind it disappears. ViaMondo does.
of wearable companies rated high risk for transparency
rated inadequate on breach notification
fail to implement privacy by default
of users say they're concerned about their data
Many brands don't build their own platform — they license a white-label backend. The company on the box is often not the company holding your parent's location history.
Most apps never state a retention period. Data can persist indefinitely — including after you delete the account.
Wearable data reaches advertisers, insurers, employers and researchers. Third parties are frequently held to weaker standards than the manufacturer.
Usually, yes. The companion app and cloud account are the softer target — and some request contacts, microphone or camera access they have no business needing.
Pebble. Amazon Halo — the Halo Rise got eleven months of support. Moxie. SmartDry. There is a public registry of hardware killed by server shutdowns.
A Samsung Gear S became unusable when Verizon shut down 3G. Cellular sunsets brick trackers, and buyers are almost never warned.
Screen time, location, messages, browsing, app use — parental control software is among the most comprehensive collectors of children's data in existence. We cover what each tool gathers, how long it keeps it, and where the phone's own free controls do the same job without a third party in the middle.
The companion app is where families actually live — setting alerts, checking location, responding at 3am. A superb tracker with a broken app is a broken product. We review both, plus the platforms underneath.
Setup difficulty, alert reliability, notification handling, multi-carer access, and whether it works when the phone is locked.
See app assessmentsWhich brands run their own back end and which license a white-label one — and why that determines your data's real custodian.
Platform directoryCan two siblings both receive alerts? Can a care agency be added? Most families discover the limits after purchase.
Compare access modelsWho answers when the button is pressed, response times, escalation protocols, and what "24/7 monitored" actually contracts you to.
How monitoring worksConnectivity is the least understood spec on any product page, and the one most likely to make a device useless for a given situation.
| Technology | Data rate | Battery | Best suited to | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bluetooth LE | Short range | Excellent | Phone-tethered devices | Needs a phone nearby. The single most common mismatch in senior care. |
| NB-IoT | ≤ 250 kbps | Longest of all | Infrequent, low-data reporting | Superb battery, weak for mobility and live tracking. Wrong for wandering alerts. |
| LTE-M | ≤ 1 Mbps | Balanced | Wearable health, asset tracking | The sweet spot for most trackers — handles movement and real-time updates. |
| 5G RedCap | 150 / 50 Mbps | Moderate | Data-rich wearables | Emerging. Omdia forecasts ~1bn connections by 2030. |
| Satellite (NTN) | Messaging | Varies | Off-grid emergencies | Garmin inReach messages anyone; Apple reaches emergency relay centres only. Decisive difference. |
Also covered: GPS accuracy and drift · geofencing · fall-detection sensors · heart rate, SpO2 and ECG · battery chemistry and real-world endurance · eSIM and carrier requirements · network sunsets.
Regulators require phone makers to publish SAR figures. They don't require it for wearables — so the numbers exist but are scattered across filings and manuals. ViaMondo collects them, publishes them per device, and explains what they mean.
Electromagnetic field. The invisible energy every wireless device gives off. It's the broad category, not a score — measured in the air around a device, in V/m or W/m².
Specific Absorption Rate. How much of that EMF your body actually absorbs, in watts per kilogram. This is the number on the spec sheet, and the one worth comparing.
Two authorities, not measurements. Both use SAR; each sets its own maximum. The FCC governs the US and Canada, ICNIRP the EU and most of the world.
In one line: a device emits EMF → your body absorbs some of it → that absorbed amount is measured as SAR → the FCC and ICNIRP each cap how high the SAR may go.
| Where the device sits | Max SAR allowed by FCC (US & Canada) | Max SAR allowed by ICNIRP (EU & most others) |
|---|---|---|
| Head or against the body Phones, chest-worn monitors, pendants |
1.6 W/kg averaged over 1 gram |
2.0 W/kg averaged over 10 grams |
| Wrist, hand, ankle or ear Smartwatches, trackers, hearables |
4.0 W/kg averaged over 10 grams — the extremity limit |
Higher allowance applies to limbs than the 2.0 W/kg local limit |
Two further ICNIRP notes: whole-body exposure is averaged over 30 minutes (raised from 6 in the 2020 revision, to match how long body temperature takes to rise), and above 6 GHz the standard switches from SAR to absorbed power density — increasingly relevant as 5G bands climb.
The comparison trap. A smartwatch's SAR figure is usually measured against the 4.0 W/kg extremity limit, while a phone's is measured against 1.6 W/kg for the body — and the FCC averages over 1 gram while ICNIRP averages over 10. Four numbers, four different yardsticks. Every figure in the ViaMondo index is published with its standard, its averaging mass and its test position attached.
Both thresholds sit roughly 50× below the exposure level that produces measurable tissue heating under controlled conditions. The margin is built in.
Wearables transmit at far lower power than handsets — Bluetooth especially. Most sit well under the limits. The trade-off worth knowing: they're worn continuously.
No causal link has been established between low-power RF from wearables and long-term harm. The WHO's Group 2B "possibly carcinogenic" classification rests on mobile phone research, not wearables.
Because you asked, and because the data should be easy to find. We report measured figures and the standards behind them — and we don't sell fear, or shielding products.
Our position. We publish SAR figures for every device we cover, alongside the applicable limit, so you can compare like with like. We report the scientific evidence as it stands rather than as either side would prefer it. If a device's SAR is unusually high for its class we'll say so — and if the evidence doesn't support a health concern, we'll say that too.
Coverage is only worth reading if nobody paid for it. Here's exactly how ViaMondo operates.
Hands-on with the device and the app. Nothing assessed from a press release.
We buy devices and accept review units. Where a unit was supplied we say so, and it's returned or donated afterwards.
No payment for reviews, rankings or placement. Manufacturers don't see our work before publication.
Capabilities, limitations, and who a device suits. The limitation is usually the decision.
Affiliate relationships declared at the top of every page.
No wearable prevents falls, wandering or emergencies, or replaces supervision.
Many trackers run on licensed white-label platforms. The name on the box is frequently not the company storing the data.
Pebble, Amazon Halo, Moxie, SmartDry — a pattern, not a series of accidents. How to judge a company's staying power before you buy.
The decision tree that never appears on a product page — and why the wrong answer means a device that never really works.
Both are sold as satellite SOS. They promise different things, and the gap matters most when it matters most.
Battery, tamper resistance, phone dependency, who answers the alert, and what happens the day they take it off.
How we score setup, alert reliability, multi-carer access, and behaviour when the phone is locked.