Talking Angela is on a lot of parents’ minds this week, and not for good reasons. Facebook status updates claiming that the game is a front for paedophiles – although shown to be a hoax a year ago when they first appeared – have been spreading like wildfire.

It seems a lot of parents have a.) been understandably been spooked by the claims, and b.) realised that although Talking Angela is installed on their devices and being used by their children, they don’t know that much about it.

It’s important that parents can take informed decisions about what apps their children use. With that in mind, here is our 10-point guide to the Talking Angela app, so that you can understand how it works, and whether it’s suitable for your kids.

1. There isn’t a paedophile ring. We can’t stress this enough: if your children use Talking Angela, they’re chatting to and interacting with a virtual cartoon cat, not a real-world childcatcher. This may seem like an obvious thing to say, but some of the more hysterical Facebook hoax updates portray the app in that way.

2. Talking Angela is mostly like the other Talking Tom and Friends apps. The app is the work of a developer called Outfit7, which makes Talking Tom Cat, Talking Ginger and a succession of other talking-animal apps. They’re hugely popular, with 1.5bn downloads to smartphones and tablets so far, and 230m people using them every month.

Like most of them, Talking Angela involves tapping and swiping to interact with the main character, while also customising her appearance with items and clothing, and talking into the microphone to have her repeat your words, squeakily.

3. Yes, it does use the camera. There’s a feature that encourages the user to make faces and gestures at the screen: nod or shake their head, smile, yawn or poke their tongue out. The app detects the motion, and gets Angela to copy the expression. It’s intended as a fun feature, rather than as a way for the app to capture photos of your child for nefarious purposes.

4. There is a text-chat feature that isn’t for children. Talking Angela actually has a ‘Child Mode’ which you’ll be asked whether you want to turn on the first time you load up the app. If it’s turned off, a box appears near the bottom of the screen inviting you to text-chat to Angela, asking and answering questions. Even parents who don’t believe the paedophile-ring rumour are concerned about the text-chat feature, and we understand why.

Angela DOES ask how old you are, what your name is, how long you’ve been friends with your best friend, what you’re planning to do today, and other questions that when asked to a child – even by a virtual cartoon cat – can seem inappropriately personal. She tells an anecdote about going to a “clothing swap party” with her boyfriend Talking Tom – a silly, innocent story for adults, but not something you’d expect an app character to be asking a child.

5. The Child Mode is easy to turn off. It just involves tapping on a smiley face at the top of the screen, then moving the toggle from on to off. It won’t stump the average six year-old for long. So while it’s possible to say that the text-chat issues above aren’t a problem, because children won’t be encountering that feature… Well, they quite possibly will.

As a parent, if you’re allowing your child to use the app, you should a.) make sure you’ve turned Child Mode on from the start, and b.) talk to your child about why they shouldn’t turn it off (and check that they don’t, regularly).

6. The app connects out to YouTube. One of the buttons children can press in Talking Angela takes them to the Talking Tom and Friends YouTube channel to watch videos based on Angela, Tom and the other characters. These videos are safe to watch for children: Outfit7 even worked with Disney on some of them.

But… your children will also be able to browse the comments under these videos, and sometimes those comments include swearwords. Also, they can access YouTube’s recommendations of similar videos to watch, and after a few taps, they’ll be out in the YouTube wilds where videos aren’t guaranteed to be appropriate. If you think your children are too young to be browsing YouTube on their own, then be aware that this feature exists in Talking Angela.

7. There are adverts in Talking Angela that lead elsewhere. This is a free-to-download app, which is making its money in two ways: from advertisements and in-app purchases. The ads appear as banners at the top of the screen, and are usually advertising other apps – Google and Hotels.com being the two most common ones at the time of writing.

They’re not dodgy ads, but they do take you out of the app and into the App Store or Google Play (depending on whether you’re on iOS or Android). It’s worth explaining to your children why they shouldn’t tap on the ads. Or you can remove them permanently with a single in-app purchase of virtual coins, which starts at 69p. Which brings us neatly onto…

8. Talking Angela uses virtual coins and in-app purchases. Whenever you download a free app for your children, we can’t stress enough how important it is to understand whether and how it uses in-app purchases for virtual items – as well as setting your restrictions to ensure your children can’t spend money without your permission.

In the case of Talking Angela, virtual coins are used to buy items and accessories for Angela: hats, shoes, makeup and so on. Some are dished out for free – 25 a day just for using the app, and a spinner to win more – while others can be earned by watching video advertisements for other apps. These tend to be other free-to-play games (which use in-app purchases…) so again, if your child is watching the video ads, make sure your restrictions ensure they can’t download those apps or spend money without asking you.

Meanwhile, you can pay for more virtual coins using real money: 69p gets you 4,200 coins while removing ads permanently, up to £17.49 for 146,500 coins plus the ad removal. Again, make sure your restrictions are on, so you’re in control of any in-app purchases, not your children!

9. Talking Angela isn’t a ‘kids’ game’ and that’s the big problem. We said earlier that 230m people are using the Talking Tom and Friends apps. Well, they aren’t all children, strange though it may seem for adults to be chatting to, dressing up and spending virtual coins on talking cartoon animals.

Talking Angela is trying to cater to two audiences: kids and grown-ups, and that’s why it’s in trouble this week: and a lot of that is down to the text-chat feature, and what would be considered cheeky, flirtatious banter for adults becoming much more inappropriate when addressed to children.

Even innocent questions about age and friends wouldn’t raise eyebrows for adults, but are spooking parents when they discover their kids chatting to Angela about personal information they’ve been taught not to share with strangers. And as some critics have noted, this in itself may be the most worrying aspect of Talking Angela: the risk that it makes children think it’s okay to tell people they don’t know all kinds of personal information, because they did it in an app.

10. Should you let your kids play Talking Angela? That’s your (informed) decision. We are very deliberately not giving a blanket “Yes, it’s fine” or “no, it’s dreadful” piece of advice. Hopefully everything we’ve written above will help you reach your own decision about whether Talking Angela is suitable for your children.

If you decide it isn’t suitable, there are plenty of other apps available for children. If you decide it’s fine, our advice would be to consider spending 69p to remove the ads and start with a cache of virtual coins, and to also sit down for a chat with your child about Child Mode, YouTube and in-app purchases, to help them act responsibly.

But that’s (lots) of our words, what do you think? Post comments with your thoughts on what we’ve said, and what your experiences have been with Talking Angela. And thank you for reading.