Master limits and filters for electronic devices
A master account system for managing one or more electronic devices through the establishment and enforcement of policies associated with the devices. Enforcement policies may be determined by characteristics of space, time and/or other criteria relating to a user(s) and/or administrator(s), or in relation to one another, or some other general circumstance. The master account may be established on a pre-paid or postpaid basis with limits applied in real-time or near-real-time. The policies may apply across any number of devices associated with the master account. The addition and decrement of units of measure associated with the master account and device account(s) may be limited to the master account, to the master account and one or more device accounts at the same time, or allocated in numerous other ways. Content and other activity filtering may also be established and managed at the master account and/or device account level.
1. A system for managing one or more devices, comprising:
one or more device accounts for each of the one or more devices, the one or more device accounts being configured to have units of measure added to and decremented from the one or more devices based on one or more activities associated with the one or more devices; and
a master account associated with the one or more devices and each of the one or more device accounts, the master account being configured to have the units of measure added to and decremented from the master account based on the one or more activities, the master account including:
a policy decider configured to store a list of policies that control the one or more activities, to decide to accept or deny a request sent to or from the one or more devices to perform the one or more activities, and to provide a decision to accept or deny the request based on the list of policies; and
a policy enforcer configured to enforce the decision by the policy decider as to whether the request has been accepted or denied by taking one or more actions consistent with the decision.
2. The system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the one or more activities include transactions and resources, and wherein the units of measure include units of measure based on the transactions and units of measure based on the resources.
3. The system as recited in claim 2 , wherein the resources include data sent to or from the one or more devices.
4. The system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the policy decider is configured to provide the decision in real-time for a first group of the one or more activities and to not provide the decision in real-time for a second group of the one or more activities.
5. The system as recited in claim 4 , wherein the first group includes transactions, wherein the units of measure include units of measure based on the transactions.
6. The system as recited in claim 4 , wherein the second group includes transactions, wherein the units of measure include units of measure based on the transactions.
7. The system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the policy decider is configured to provide the decision in real-time.
8. The system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the one or more device accounts and the master account include limits.
9. The system as recited in claim 8 , wherein the limits are based on time.
10. The system as recited in claim 8 , wherein the limits are based on resources.
11. The system as recited in claim 8 , wherein the limits are based on one or more locations of the one or more devices.
12. The system as recited in claim 11 , wherein the limits control content and resources available to the one or more devices.
13. The system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the one or more actions include filtering content sent to or from the one or more devices.
14. The system as recited in claim 13 , wherein said filtering includes limiting a quantity of the content.
15. The system as recited in claim 13 , wherein said filtering includes excluding the content.
16. The system as recited in claim 8 , wherein the list of policies includes policies based on the limits, and wherein the decision by the policy decider denies the request if one of the limits will be exceeded by accepting the request.
17. The system as recited in claim 8 , wherein the list of policies includes policies based on the limits, and wherein the decision by the policy decider denies the request if one of the limits has already been met or exceeded.
18. The system as recited in claim 8 , wherein each of the one or more device accounts has a different limit.
19. The system as recited in claim 18 , wherein the different limit is unrelated to a limit on the master account.
20. The system as recited in claim 18 , where a total of the different limits is not equal to a limit on the master account.
21. The system as recited in claim 18 , wherein in response to the one or more actions taken by the policy enforcer the one or more device accounts are decremented by a first amount of the unit of measure and the master account is decremented by a second amount of the unit of measure.
22. The system as recited in claim 8 , wherein the list of policies includes policies based on the limits, and wherein the one or more actions includes sending an alert to the master account.
23. The system as recited in claim 8 , wherein the list of policies includes policies based on the limits, and wherein the one or more actions includes redirecting the one or more devices.
24. The system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the units of measure added to the one or more devices are based on prior usage of the one or more devices.
25. The system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the list of policies includes an eligibility limit for one or more users of the one or more devices.
26. The system as recited in claim 1 , wherein the eligibility limit is determined by a government program.