Why Google Is Disabling Kids' Gmail Accounts 228
theodp writes "The Washington Post's Elizabeth Flock managed to hold Google's feet to the fire and get an explanation of sorts for why it's making kids cry by disabling their Gmail accounts after years of use. Giving 12-year-olds access to Gmail — unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school — is proving to be as formidable a task for Google as making renewable energy cheaper than coal. But what about that viral 'Dear Sophie' commercial, asked Flock, in which a father creates a Gmail account for his baby daughter and uses it to send her photos, videos, and messages that chronicle her growing up? 'The implied understanding,' replied a Google spokesman, 'is that the girl in the story does not have access to the account, but that she will have access to it "someday."'"
Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Funny)
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How does that get app store approval? It sounds like it would violate the commandment to worship no other gods beside Jobs.
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Funny)
The iBle.
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As an atheist, I wholeheartedly support this idea. If all kids were forced to read the entire Bible before they turn 13, and pass the exam on textual knowledge - why, that would probably do more to reduce the influence of Christianity than efforts of all the various skeptic and secular humanist groups in the country. ~
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As an atheist, I wholeheartedly support this idea. If all kids were forced to read the entire Bible before they turn 13, and pass the exam on textual knowledge - why, that would probably do more to reduce the influence of Christianity than efforts of all the various skeptic and secular humanist groups in the country. ~
As a christian, I would take that deal everyday. When the bible is just read, and understood in it's context to say what it says, it makes more sense than science falsely called, and much more sense than the philosophers of this world.
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Funny)
I was watching Venture Bros with a friend, who is a lukewarm Christian , the other day. He was talking about Brock Samson. It went like this.
I said "Samson, like from the Bible".
He said "What?".
I said "Magic Hair, Jawbone of an ass, Paid his gambling debts with foreskins?"
He said "WHAT? That's not in the bible, you're making that shit up, right?".
Bible stories FTW.
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The bible makes sense? Sure it does. And so does the Koran, so they say. In fact, pretty much any ridiculous belief has a ton of supporters.
Never anyone reputable though. I mean, look at the people who say that - idiots who say things like " ... science falsely called, and ...".
I know you get brownie points for trying to convince people of the existence of the sky fairy, and most-importantly you feel like it validates your belief, but it's crap. The book, the teachings, and the institutionalized ignorance r
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The bible and it's ilk the Koran and all the rest are some of the worst set of "moral teachings" mankind has ever inflicted on itself.
You have only to do two cents worth of internet search or read God is Not Great by Hitchens or Why I am Not A Christian by Russel or anything by Dawkins and especially Sam Harris's The End of Faith http://www.samharris.org/ [samharris.org] to explode the i
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Screw that! The kids should be toiling in the fields... :p
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me that Google should startup a 'Google Kids' to handle things like this in compliance with COPPA. Once the child reaches 12, they can convert it over to a regular Gmail account.
Parents can administrate, while at the same time teaching their kids how to behave on the internet, teachers can email assignments, etc. As long as control rests solely with the parent, I see no issue with something like that.
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually - COPPA needs to die. Parents are supposed to be a child's first line of defense. Then the courts. Simply mandating that kids can't access and/or must be monitored by a provider such as Google is simply asinine. As a parent, and as a grandparent, I'd cheefully counsel my kids how to circumvent COPPA bullshit.
"See the box, where they ask how old you are? What's the minimum age? Alright, Honey, just add 3 or 6 to that minimum age, so your "birth year" is going to be 19xx, alright? Yeah, I know you're not 20 yet, but THEY don't know that!"
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think teaching how to circumvent COPPA is dangerous without teaching when to do so. There are a lot of age verification things out there on the internet and they're not all for the same reason. COPPA is for preventing a child from disclosing too much personal information for use by another party without informed consent of the parent (i.e. marketing and solicitation). I think teaching a child not to give out their real birth date online is a very valuable lesson. (Birth date and state are enough info for an accurate guess at a social security number [msn.com], and the region can probably be obtained with a reasonable chance of success for a child (lower chance to have moved from the area of birth)). Other age verifiers are for content, some websites self regulate, others follow third party guidelines (e.g. ESRB). I expect to be the final word in what content my children permissibly access on the internet, but I do appreciate the age checkers as a sign for younger children to stop and ask permission. Older children are going to do their own thing according to what you've taught them up to that point.
Also, I've always been surprised that the age submission check is considered a valid method for absolving an entity of COPPA's requirements considering the lengths they have to go through if they do know they are dealing with a child. It seems rather trivial in comparison to these requirements: [wikipedia.org]
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
You have it backwards. Having ridiculous laws is much worse than not having laws at all. Ridiculous laws will be broken and this is what undermines the very respect for the law.
Also protecting the precious snowflakes at all costs has dire consequences when they meet the harsh bitch called life completely unprepared.
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You have it backwards. Having ridiculous laws is much worse than not having laws at all. Ridiculous laws will be broken and this is what undermines the very respect for the law. Also protecting the precious snowflakes at all costs has dire consequences when they meet the harsh bitch called life completely unprepared.
Backwards? I think I was pointing out how ridiculous the requirements for age verification were in the light that a company is exempt merely by allowing for a user submitted, unverifiable, age. The law allowed a dead easy loophole for plausible deniability while setting up a straightforward behavioral conditioning teaching the user to hit refresh, lie, and open the cage door to the cheese.
However, this law does work the way it was intended to. The children can't break it, it's not targeted at them, but a
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Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Funny)
You are seeing that with the OWS people. If you look at the demographics, there are a LOT of people born after 1985 or so. They lived their entire lives without ever seeing a recession. They think the enormous growth of the 90's was normal. Now comes a recession that affects their precious little selves and they freak the fuck out.
If I can speak for my Generation (GenX), for a moment: (abridged version) Fuck you, Boomers and fuck you Millenials.
The Baby Boomers for really screwing us over, several times. I look forward to the retirement homes we're going to toss you into on the budget you gave us. The Millenials for being whining idiots that generally fuck up the Internet I helped create. Please build better retirement homes in about 30 years, thanks.
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I think teaching how to circumvent COPPA is dangerous without teaching when to do so.
Yeah, I'm thinking teaching our legislators how to write intelligent laws is the least dangerous approach. Barring that, teaching my children that the reason I teach them about the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and God is the reason I am teaching them to question authority, is the appropriate response.
Read before slagging. Compliance rules are short. (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think you 'get' COPPA [ftc.gov]. It doesn't say an internet service needs to monitor your children. It is saying in essence the exact opposite. It says that they have to disclose what data they collect, who they share it with, limit the data collected to only what is necessary to use the service, can't collect any information about the child unless the parent gives explicit permission. If the parent gives permission to collect the data, it allows the parents to tell the service to stop and to delete the child's data. It also lists other rules on what data can be collected and how it is shared... but read it yourself I'm not going to list it all here. The only thing that pisses me off is that I can't stipulate the same conditions to Google for myself.
COPPA is a tool to aid the parent and COPPA is anathema to everything Google is about: collecting data. Data is the life blood of the company; literally. It is easier for them to just say no to those under 13 than to spend a ton of money to set up the required controls. Especially, as I think, most parents are likely to chose not to allow their child's data to be collected nor shared (and I can't blame them one bit). And it is the data that is important to Google, not the child. It is with the data that they generate their revenue. So in a nutshell, they have two choices: 1) spend a ton of money to create and maintain the controls to meet the COPPA requirements and keep children using GMail and other services (which also eat up bandwidth and disk space, both of which also cost money) without gaining any revenue generating data from them in return, or 2) simply bar children from using Google services. Option 2 is way cheaper. Remember in a business the number one rule is that money coming in MUST be greater than money going out. Google is just following their number one rule. You libertarians and neocons can't possibly argue Google's position in this respect, can you? Hell, even business friendly liberals.. yes they exist... can't argue either.
Financially the choice they made makes much more sense for their business (and they are a business, not your cuddly free email provider). Remember, the only reason Google cares at all about the child or anyone else who puts their personal data on a Google server is because they put their personal data on a Google server.
You can try and say it is up to the parent to monitor the child which is a good starting point, but what are you going to do when the biggest services tell you they are going to store and possibly share (at their discretion not yours) your child's data and there is nothing you can do about it? Tell your child not to use the internet? Good luck with that. Seriously... good luck. The rest of us understand that you can say no, but if they can get access to the internet, anywhere, they are going to start using it. The library, a friends house, wherever. Especially if all their friends are using it, and then it will happen no matter what you say or do (unless you are one of those who chose to live in the backwoods of Idaho because 'the government is out to get you'... but if that's the case, you have more serious problems, and it ain't the government). So you might as well have them use it at home. And it would be nice to know who knows their name and where they live, and better yet, tell them to mind their own business.
As to how to verify the parent:
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And how would Google know if they are dealing with a parent or a child during initial setup without providing yet more information than I'm currently putting out there on the web. I'm a parent and grandparent as well and I have no accounts on social sites that I use. When asked to en
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I doubt you could verify something like that.
But even if you could, it's a complete waste of time. "The children" don't need to be protected from every little thing.
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Contract law is responsible (Score:2)
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
I was wondering, do you think it would be more efficient if you could come in and tell us when something is not Google's fault? I'm just saying, it would probably save you some time, since the list of things that you think are their fault is clearly much longer.
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Agreed - the fault is on Google for not finding a better way to handle situations like this.
There are any number of ways they could have fixed the situation, or allowed for this sort of use with parental approval; instead, they went for the least common denominator "fuck you kid, come back when you're 18."
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Informative)
Please read the following;
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act [wikipedia.org]
"fuck you kid, come back when you're 18."
The age is 13, not 18, and because of your ignorance,
"fuck you Moryath, come back when you know what you're talking about"
What does Google sell? Users. (Score:2)
How about fuck you Galestar for focusing on one small part of the argument and dismissing the other facts presented.
The users are Google's product. They could have done what Microsoft did with Hotmail, but instead they went the route that says 'come back when you're older'. This means either Google can't turn off their marketing machine or they don't want to.
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Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I would be more ok with Google just saying "this isn't a service for children" if they didn't also make TV ads about children having Google accounts. Pick one or the other!
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In the Dear Sophie ad, the account holder was the father, not the child. The account would be turned over when the child was old enough. In this case, "old enough" means 13.
Honestly, I don't really care about a 12 year old's "fight" for online services. Compared to problems other kids face, this is an eye-rolling non-issue.
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows Live/Hotmail allows and encourages child accounts.
That leads me to a few ideas as to why Google won't comply with COPPA. The most likely one being that they just can't turn the marketing machine off.
Re:Who's fault is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
If people don't like it, they can go pay for email somewhere else. The sense of entitlement going on here is ridiculous.
So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like every 9 year old on MySpace ever did... just put in the wrong birthyear and everything stays cool.
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Re:So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... (Score:5, Informative)
Or go over to yahoo, which is all spammers anyway.
FTFY.
Re:So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, the use of the viral video is a little off, since the baby never actually does anything with the account (as the Google spokesman says) - the father signs up for the account and agrees to the terms, the father then composes messages and sends them, the father reads messages received etc etc. Its the father doing things in the babies name, which is a whole different ball game to the kid signing up and using it themselves.
Re:So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... (Score:5, Funny)
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What? That's insane. You can't lie about your age on the internet!
Re:So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Dog years. (Score:2)
Dog years are a made up thing. How long a planet takes to orbit the Sun, however, is how a year is defined. So just choose an appropriate planet. If the site operator is smart enough to specify Earth years don't sign up there. They are obviously hacker types who will steal all your personal info.
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What? That's insane. You can't lie about your age on the internet!
But if I don't lie the bad people will take away my /. account!!
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You can lie about age on the internet for now. That is, until the government creates an online id [tomsguide.com].
In Korea, every citizen is assigned a National Registration number, that online sites are required to collect before opening an account, even a MMORPG account, and that identifies the subscriber's age.
So yeah... your ability to lie about your age on the internet relies upon you living in a free country, or being able to do business with other organizations in a free country, without them being blocked.
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Like every 9 year old on MySpace ever did... just put in the wrong birthyear and everything stays cool.
Yeah, when I saw that immediately after COPPA was passed, ICQ's terms of service changed to include (paraphrased) "if you're under 13, fuck off", I knew the US government had not thought about unintended consequences.
Might as Well Teach them Young To Lie... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems a good lesson that often in life one must tell lies of varying degrees. Fibbing about age is one of those.
Many websites and services (email, web hosting / blog sites, facebook, etc) have age stipulations ranging from 13 to 21, which effectively makes much of the web useless to young people unless they lie.
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That's not usually the site's fault, that's usually legislation like COPPA which makes it untenable.
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Absolutely agree. Not faulting the websites, services, etc for the age restrictions. Google is in a no-win situation due to the law.
Effectively creating a "don't ask, don't tell" situation, which seems to be very commonplace in life. Many activities are technically restricted, forbidden, etc ... but overlooked as long as both sides play along ...
An example is Facebook one user / one account policy - long as the user keeps their duplicate accounts / usernames on the down-low, and don't cause problems, Facebo
Re:Might as Well Teach them Young To Lie... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just wait until they sue the kids for violating the law meant to protect them, under the exact same law.
And then have 'em tried as adults, just for good measure.
Don't forget to tell your 13-year old kids it's illegal to make n00d self-shots in the mirror with their iPhones. They will be in possession of extremely illegal content one minute after their 14th birthday, be tried as adults and registered as sex offenders for life.
Remember: all the things we used to do when we were young are now illegal. All.
My daughter was extremely upset as well. (Score:4, Interesting)
One day my pre-teen-aged daughter wanted to set up an avatar for her Google mail account, like her best friend had. A nice pony or whatever. So we have opened the settings and one of things that Google wanted to know was the date of birth. After naively filling in the date (*not* the real number, but still way low age) ... poooof ... the account was gone. And mind you, this was account my daughter has created in an "IT" class. In my country we do not have educational accounts the article talks about.
In one second the account is there, the next ... gone.
Google wanted scan of my ID or something.
YOU ARE NOT GONNA GET IT GOOGLE!!! You Do. Not. Need. A. Copy. Of. My. Passport.
So we have created another account with a slightly different name, but my daughter has been upset for quite a long time. Still is, in fact. And I had to explain why Google are such ... bloody morons.
The same day I have made backup of my entire Google mail account. I do not trust them anymore that they won't pull the same stunt with MY personal account.
Re:My daughter was extremely upset as well. (Score:4, Insightful)
You Do. Not. Need. A. Copy. Of. My. Passport.
Actually.. legally.. they do. If you want access to that account again, you can either verify that her parent has authorized the kid to be scaped and indexed and acknowledge that your kid can receive the accompanying advertising, or you can create another anonymous account to have similar advertising, scraping, analyzing done to her anyway. In one case, she gets her account back; in the other case, Google gets their data anyway.
As much as I'm for privacy, it's not like providing a copy of your passport is providing anything that Google doesn't have on you anyway. They don't even need _your_ google account to link it to, do they (not sure)? They just, legally, need to be sure that a parent/guardian has allowed Google to analyze their kid. US laws, if not your country's laws.
So perhaps you should explain to your daughter one of two things:
1. Your resentment of someone verifying that you are you, and you have control over your kid
2. US laws designed to protect the privacy of kids, and how they're hurting her. Perhaps you can go into how your own country's privacy laws work.
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So perhaps you should explain to your daughter one of two things:
1. Your resentment of someone verifying that you are you, and you have control over your kid
2. US laws designed to protect the privacy of kids, and how they're hurting her. Perhaps you can go into how your own country's privacy laws work.
Simple, in countries like Canada. The privacy act says that the individual is protected because the individual has the final say on their information, not the government, or a company. He has the right to be upset, he also has the right to be upset that a company 'wants' a copy of his passport.
US laws are broken, plenty of other countries like your northern neighbors have found simple elegant solutions to these problems which don't require handing away personally identifiable information.
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US laws, as usual, especially regarding children, are fucking inane.
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Having had this happen to my 12yo daughter as well (and also refusing to provide Google with any form of ID, for what I would have thought were obvious reasons) I'd say the real issue was that Google provided no means to back up data -- it was really a case of my daughter unwittingly entering her birth date, and then bam! all data gone for good.
I understand that Google has an obligation under US law to prevent kids under 13 from using email accounts. But since this is clearly new legislation that wasn't in
No they don't. (Score:2)
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Why would you trust that they wouldn't do that in the first place? It's a FREE account. You get what you pay for.
Re:My daughter was extremely upset as well. (Score:5, Insightful)
Free does not mean 'immune from criticism'.
Why do you imply that it does?
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The moral of the story is that laws have unintended consequences.
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Google wanted scan of my ID or something.
YOU ARE NOT GONNA GET IT GOOGLE!!! You Do. Not. Need. A. Copy. Of. My. Passport.
The people they have actually checking those scans have basically no way of verifying their authenticity. Scan your passport and then photoshop it to be full of lies and send that to them. They will be happy and you will be happy.
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The people they have actually checking those scans have basically no way of verifying their authenticity. Scan your passport and then photoshop it to be full of lies and send that to them. They will be happy and you will be happy.
Do not do that. Do not lie. Do not give them an official reason to shut down your own gmail account in addition to your kid's (or send the black planes after you, and put you into Gitmo, as a Non-American, you know it would be the first place we'd send you. Right?). Stay on the higher moral ground. Send them a copy of your passport, but black out all the information, all the serial numbers, except for your birth year and the specific gmail account you want them to reactivate.
For all we know, passports and i
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The same day I have made backup of my entire Google mail account. I do not trust them anymore that they won't pull the same stunt with MY personal account.
On the other hand, this is a convenient and completely automated way to delete an account :-)
I still have a GMail account, but it is devoid of messages, and if anything new shows up it will be instantly transferred via POP3 and deleted from the server. I did that when Google started randomly deleting accounts for "wrong" name or something. They said
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YOU ARE NOT GONNA GET IT GOOGLE!!! You Do. Not. Need. A. Copy. Of. My. Passport.
How about sending them something like this [paulnoll.com]? Or something like that [hostingprod.com], but instead of blanking out the birth year, you'd leave that year intact, but blank out the month, the day, and pretty much everything else that could possibly be used to identify you?
This could work well too for privacy-related petition drives. Petition your National government for more privacy, and just leave enough information to infer your nationality. And for those of us in the US who'd like to petition our State Senators, just leave y
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Probably not. Unless he's living under totalitarian rule (China, Saudi Arabia, etc.), chances are he's used to more sensible legislation regarding the internet.
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True. However, many young people rely on social networking sites to meet up and coordinate activities, as well as, chat directly through them - the major ones, in particular, Facebook and Google+, have similar age restrictions to that of GMail.
Re:My daughter was extremely upset as well. (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, they don't think they have jurisdiction over foreign individuals. But they do have jurisdiction over the company holding the data - and quite possibly over the physical server itself (if it is in an american data centre).
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Why does your pre-teen daughter have an e-mail account to begin with?
I don't see why not.
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Why does your pre-teen daughter have an e-mail account to begin with?
To communicate?
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Why does your pre-teen daughter have an e-mail account to begin with?
I can quote the original comment for you:
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Why does your pre-teen daughter have an e-mail account to begin with?
It's possible that only his fiancer had the gmail account, and signed up the daughter just for one round of Holy Bible Trivia (you know, the one where they accumulate the most points to get to Heaven, and if they don't get enough points, they go to Hell. It's a very fun game by the way. Very clean and moral. I'm sure you'd love it.)
Why would you *ever* trust Google with anything "personal?" Google makes its money by *selling* people.
Thank your lucky stars you're just a robot then! You're safe.
Which sort of makes the whole Google-account-for-a-pre-teen-daughter-thing not just bad parenting, but creepy as well...
As a robot, I'm not surprised you'd find this creepy.
If I were a robot too, I'm sure such concepts as procreation and
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It might not have been matched on the phone number. If you're both on Facebook and friended, it might have pulled the information from Facebook (assuming your friend has also set up the Facebook app (which comes by default in some Android phones)).
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If this experience was so traumatic for your daughter, her life is probably far too sheltered and you spoil her.
I take it that if you say "Yes, two, please" to a seller of hot dogs in the street and get a slap in the face in return, that experience will be totally fine with you, and you wouldn't be upset, not in the slightest.
Seriously, it's not that big a deal, create a new account, or create an account somewhere else.
The problem is not with that. The problem is in being wronged, not respected, trea
Obviously a ploy to help the US Postal Service (Score:2)
So the government passes a law, which prohibits children from using email service. So the children have to write letters the old fashioned way, and send them via the US Postal Service . . . which is owned by the government! No conflict of interest here!
On the good side, being that so many couples tend to have children, a lot of folks might be pissed off at this law. And then they might start putting more political pressure for scrutiny on laws that are being passed by the government to regulate the Inte
Don't Link Your GMail to Google+ Account (Score:5, Informative)
In reply to some comments / sentiments in this thread regarding how quick Google is to delete accounts, be wary of creating a Google+ account / user profile.
There have been many reports of Google+ accounts being flagged for various reasons (username choosen, duplicate acct, complaints from others, etc) resulting in the linked services, such as, GMail being suspended / terminated too.
Imho, avoid creating a Google+ account - not so easy now that Google is rolling that out across services, so the next best option is not create a profile; leave it as empty as possible. And keep services separate ... don't use the same Google+ account for GMail as one does for other services (ie. YouTube).
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That's why I deleted all my youtube accounts a few weeks back because Google insisted I link everything to anything about me and couldn't opt out anymore, hmm no thanks which really sucked as one of the channels was pretty big but so be it. So ATM im n a replace google search mission. I guess Dogpile and Duck Duck Go as suggested a few days ago will do for now.
I deleted my Facebook about 4 years ago since they wanted more now I see Google is the new minister of information which doesn't take much to be corr
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Why you still have slashdot account?
He explained that. Slashdot doesn't want to know anything about the user except a login name and password, which are both random.
You could, of course, compile a user's profile from his posts and comments. However few people are that much concerned; it's in the domain of governments and secret services, and they don't care about poor peons. Businesses, on the other hand, wring those same peons dry.
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don't use the same Google+ account for GMail as one does for other services (ie. YouTube).
This is good advice, but it's going to end badly if you do that.
I can't convey the annoyance of having to switch account every time I click on a like button, or go watch a youtube video, or add something to my calendar, or do something else on one of the Google sites.
It's better than it used be, a little bit, but Google is becoming so much more pervasive in everything I do already, it has become a huge annoyance that I would gladly pay ten times over what I'm already paying to have it all go away (And yes,
Son's Account Was Reinstated With My Supervision (Score:5, Informative)
Hi All,
I too was put off by Google's disabling of my son's account, but I decided to give Google a chance and see if they would be reasonable. I sent a note to them in the only way I could come up with, by writing it (by hand on a paper), scanning together, my ID, and my note which was an explanation that my son was really under age, and that as his parent, I was the "holder" of his account, but he was using it under my supervision. I sent the note to their photo ID link, and his account was reinstated. I assume that they actually read the note, and allowed this, but it is possible they have an automated process that accepts any photo you send as ID, and automatically reinstates the account. If they do, shame on them. If they don't, I applaud them for being reasonable.
Rob
You get what you pay for (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:5, Insightful)
"Free" doesn't mean "exempt from criticism." That said, they're also free to not listen to you.
And I think this is really the fault of idiotic "think of the children" laws.
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And I think this is really the fault of idiotic "think of the children" laws.
It is, COPPA's requirements are beyond onerous, COPPA is entirely responsible for the whole 13+ or go away divide on the Internet. If someone's 13+ then you don't have to do anything special. Under 13 you need special parental permission with proof of the parent's age (that's the whole reason they have to have a scan of an ID to reinstate the account, along with the parent's statement that they're the actual account holder allowing their child to use it under their supervision) to collect any data on the
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Most "child protection" laws these days are bad solutions to untenable problems that involve parents shirking responsibility to the government and corporations for the supervision of their kids, and the overt dismissal of children's and teen's responsibility for themselves, which should not be legislated by arbitrary rules and numbers.
I can name dozens of examples, but this isn't the time or the place.
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Chromebooks? (Score:3)
Google Apps for Education sounds great, but I've yet to run into a school using it.
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Get rid of that stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was ten (1997), I had an account on virtually all website/email services that were big (relatively) at the time. There was never question of deleting my account because I was a kid.
Stripping kids of the right to use that kind of service is the same as stripping kids from having the right to use the Internet. This is preposterous and stupid.
American people, get rid of that law.
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When I was ten (1997), I had an account on virtually all website/email services that were big (relatively) at the time. There was never question of deleting my account because I was a kid.
Probably because they didn't know you were a kid? The only time this comes up is when there are problems, and much of this is automated now. Yay for progress.
Stripping kids of the right to use that kind of service is the same as stripping kids from having the right to use the Internet.
Do children have rights? I thought most of those came when you were of age to vote and serve one's country, able to sign a contract etc. To be clear I'm not a fan of these laws or requirements but what right is it to use a service offered by a private party, especially when they're a minor? What right is it to violate that private party's terms of serv
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Yes, children have rights, independently of being adults and having the right to vote.
A service provider is not allowed to do arbitrary age discrimination. This has nothing to do with your lousy home analogy.
What about the 96% (Score:2)
This law is part of your broken legal system, not anyone else's. Why should it be foisted upon the rest of the planet?*
Several years ago, my son got his first android phone, the G1. He asked my permission to lie about his age to set up an account. I was already aware that Google tries to do this and said OK. He is now old enough to be "legal" and has come to no harm. This was in spite of various crazies advising me to put Net Nanny or some other corporate nonsense on my PC and then not allowing him to
Home schooling (Score:2)
Google doesn’t allow users who are under the age of 13 to have Google Accounts, unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school.
And hoes does Google handle this for home schooled children?
It's even worse for Google+ (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, but I'm not buying it (Score:3)
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[Subject: "Kids don't need email.."] Nuff said.
"Nuff said?" Er, you've said absolutely nothing beyond giving us some stupid pat assertion under the delusion it's not worth backing it up. Cool opinion, bro!
That said, I'm more curious to know why this is you decided to apparently come back and post this one comment just a day short of five years after your previous one on December 19 2006?! [slashdot.org]
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That said, I'm more curious to know why this is you decided to apparently come back and post this one comment just a day short of five years after your previous one on December 19 2006?!
Today is his 18th birthday.