Wednesday
September 18, 2024 
Just as school is about to start, the Bucks County Sheriff’s Department is alerting the community to concerns about a smartphone app that, officials say, can be risky for teenagers.
The Saturn iPhone app was developed in 2018 for high school students, but has been growing increasingly popular, as teens say it helps them keep track of their class schedules, their friends’ schedules and school events.
But critics, including Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran, say it lacks privacy settings and other safeguards.
“While Saturn proclaims it solves the problem of managing social and academic life in high school, its use potentially poses a serious threat to students’ security and physical safety,” Harran said, in a statement.
To upload their class schedule onto the Saturn app, students scan a personal photo and a photo of their class schedule. The app then creates the student’s school calendar.
According to “Saturn,” the company maintains “rigorous content moderation processes in public forums” but also relies on users to report “uncomfortable” incidents on the application.
The calendar app says it does not allow violence, threats, nudity, graphic sexual images, references to child sexual exploitation or promotion of self-harm.
However, Harran said, “The problem is that literally anyone can join the app, obtain full access to the social network and view all users’ data.
Within minutes, the sheriff said, “every user associated with a particular high school can access personal shareable information, including student names, photos, class schedules, private messaging, and links to Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Venmo accounts.”
In light of the criticism, Saturn’s developers recently issued a formal statement, which stressed concern for student safety.
“A big part of this commitment is aiming to make sure that everyone who is part of a school community on Saturn is actually a student at that school. Verification is important not only for safety but also for protecting the integrity of each community on the platform. Verifying students on Saturn relies on a combination of different processes and dozens of signals, including contact book overlap and/or school email verification.”
Harran said, however, “To set up and use the app account anyone can add a fake name, birthday and graduating class. They can also opt out of providing a location and decline uploading their contacts, essentially creating an anonymous profile for the user.”
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