The Internet is straining at its digital seams to contain all of the terrible people we would never want speaking to children, yet new technology makes it easier and easier for kids to interact with these unsavories.

Today, a San Francisco startup called Fingerprint Digital announced its new social-gaming platform for children, also called Fingerprint, which brings vast parental control and safety to kid’s games.

The developer builds the platform into apps like The Flying Alphabetinis, which hit the Apple App Store today. It’s a Boggle-like title with Fingerprint’s suite of safety features.

“With so much mobile content available today, we recognized the need to create a go-to game play platform that parents trust and kids love,” Fingerprint chief executive officer Nancy MacIntyre said in a statement. “And today, we’ve enhanced the entire experience by adding multiplayer and safe social features tailored specifically for our young audience so that kids can connect, collaborate, or compete.”

Fingerprint provides families with a shared account. Parents can manage everything, but the developer leaves enough padding so that adults don’t have to stand over the shoulders of young gamers.

Kids can pick their own usernames from a list of preselected words. Names are funny and odd since they’re two ideas smashed together, like DinoBunny. This keeps everything anonymous and ensures that no one, except the parent on the family account, knows a player’s real name.

Kids can also safely play with random adults since players can only chat using canned, prescripted greetings and congratulations.

Fingerprint Digital plans to enable its platform on a plethora of other games including licensed titles like Scribble My VeggieTales Story, Step-by-Story: Caillou Adventures, and Franklin Talk and Playset.

The various games are all accessible through the platform and are free to try, so young players never need to leave the Fingerprint ecosystem.

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Fingerprint sensors are a staple of spy movies, but have yet to be an integral part of life for us civilians. However, as the use of mobile devices to exchange sensitive data, like payment information and documents, continues to explode, non-spies also require additional protection.

Biometric company Validity Sensors has completed its fifth funding round of $22 million. Intel Capital led the investment, with support from World Fair and DDS. The company announced raising the first $10 million tranche of a $20 million round on October 18, 2012.

Validity Sensors offers Natural ID solutions that authenticate users by their unique human characteristics, like fingerprints, voice, and face. Fingerprinting is the most effective method of verifying identity, and the flagship technology LiveFlex can securely replace or supplement passwords and pins.

This Series E will be funneled towards shifting the focus of the business. Whereas before, Validity Sensors shipped products to PC manufactures and was geared towards enterprise customers, it is now pivoting to the mobile and tablet market.

According to a March 2012 study by the Federal Reserve, 42% of consumers do not fully trust that their financial information is secure via mobile payments. By making consumers more comfortable carrying out transactions using their phones, the technology opens more opportunities for online commerce. Furthermore, as professionals continue to conduct business outside of secure company networks, there is a greater need to protect their data.

TeleSoft Partners took the lead on the investment, with full participation from previous investors Crosslink Capital, Panorama Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Venture Tech Associates.

This $22 million brings the total amount raised to $84.6 million. Validity Sensors is based in San Jose and was founded in 2000.

Fingerprint says it has a first-of-its-kind learning and entertainment network made up of high-quality mobile apps from first and third-party developers. Every application in the hub is designed to foster communication between children and their parents through the use of voice messages, game play reports called “Snapshots,” notes of encouragement, and game recommendations.

The Fingerprint platform allows any third-party developer that meets the company’s curriculum and quality standards to integrate their game into the network and take advantage of its communication features. In this way, Fingerprint Digital says it can provide an enhanced experience for children and parents that will ultimately be more compelling than standalone apps from edutainment competitors such as Callaway, Ruckus Media Group, and LaunchPad.

Fingerprint Digital says kids have signed in to the network more than 607,000 times and have spent 5 million minutes playing its five debut games since their December 1st launch. It estimates the average game play session lasts 8.15 minutes, and over 1.3 million Snapshot reports have been sent to parents informing them of their child’s progress. Chief Executive Officer Nancy MacIntyre says those numbers are nothing short of compelling.

“The lengthy game play sessions show us kids are enjoying the games, while the sheer volume of Snapshot reports generated help parents know what their kids are playing,” she said. “Equally impressive are the conversion numbers. Once kids have experienced one of the apps, they’ve asked their parents to download others. For example, over 60 percent of users who play Big Kid Life Fire Fighter are downloading Big Kid Life Fairy Princess. We’re definitely seeing the benefits of the hub and recommendation feature.”

MacIntyre, former executive vice president of product and marketing at educational toy company LeapFrog Enterprises, co-founded Fingerprint in July 2010 with Kevin Wendle and Daniel Klaus of K2MediaLabs after recognizing a growing opportunity in the mobile space for educational children’s apps. Based in San Francisco, the 12-person company has raised $1.4 million in funding to date from investors K2MediaLabs, THQ, Reed Elsevier Ventures, and Suffolk Holdings.

MacIntyre says the company’s goals are simple. “Grow our user base of Fingerprint families globally, make our products available on Android, continue to expand platform features that connect grown-ups and their kids, and recruit the best kids developers and content creators to ‘fingerprint’ their content using our SDK to publish on our platform,” she said. “All our activity is focused on making Fingerprint the first mobile network for kids learning and play.”

Fingerprint is currently working on a slate of new games scheduled to launch sometime this year. Next month, the company will release Kid Explorer, which will be the first Fingerprint game to feature expandable content.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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