"You basically have a great sense of freedom, because you are able to offload your bio-memory, and just commit all of the facts to an e-memory."

He said that the time is right for people to take e-memories seriously.

"I wouldn't have said this 20 years ago because of the difficulty and the cost to do it. The opportunity now is: it doesn't cost anything to do this."

Claims of iPhones exploding have surfaced in Britain and France, with at least one person, a teenager, sustaining an eye injury. In addition, KIRO TV in Seattle has turned up 800 pages of documents from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that include cases of burning or flaming iPods.

There have been many well-documented cases of laptop batteries bursting into flames, so it's plausible that iPhones could heat up too, given that they use the same (or similar) battery technology.

I'm on my third iPhone (having upgraded twice), and I've also owned an iPod Touch. I loved them all dearly, largely because they never exploded into flames, burning me and my family alive. Just saying.

In a statement Symantec's internet safety advocate, Marian Merritt, said that with the service, "parents can stay in the loop on what their kids are doing online".

"Any of us who have been teenagers are not surprised kids look for information about sex," Ms Merritt told AFP news agency.

"It also helps identify 'teachable moments' when parents should be talking with their kids about appropriate online behaviour and other issues in their kids' online lives."