Nik Rajkovic / news@whmi.com

We hear it all the time, keep tabs on our child's online activities. That was the message from Howell Police investigating Tuesday's email threat that forced the school district to close down.

Detectives said the threat appears to have come from outside the U.S., and is possibly tied nationwide "swatting" incidents, online gaming and social media sites.

David Everitt is a parent who launched GameSafe, a monthly subscription app parents can install on their child's device, alerting them of suspicious chat behavior on sites like Roblox or Minecraft.

"If your child looks in the search bar on Roblox 'xyz,' there's going to be a myriad of servers that pop up. All of those have those have illicit content happening," he says.

"I'm sure Roblox did not intend for that to happen, but what you have there is major cause for concern for a parent. To be educated on this is the most important thing."

GameSafe uses artificial intelligence to look for trends and indicators like direct sexual conversations, personal identifying information, bullying, hate speech, which is then relayed to the parent.

Everitt says threats similar to those made against Howell Public Schools are often created using location data on gaming and social media sites.

"We have this breakthrough technology that can see in real time what the child sees. So if we're able to identify there's potential for school violence because this user name on social media is broadcasting this, then we can integrate that with the school systems and get ahead of the problem," he says.

Learn more about GameSafe at the link below.