14 ms·

Google made my son cry

• deleted 15y ago
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• TorKlingberg 15y ago
  A scary thing is, if I signed up for Google+ and accidentally chose 2000 as my birth year, my Google account would have been locked. That includes Gmail, Google Apps, Google Code and probably Android. I guess making phone calls would still work, but who knows in a future when we all use IP telephony.
• willvarfar 15y ago
  I hope the googlers who browse here will be able to sort out a special mail-log as a parting gift
  • CWIZO 15y ago
    I hope the googlers here will stop the "impending doom of deletion" or delay it, so he has enough time to sort this out.
    • ralfd 15y ago
      I hope the googlers here will enable G+ for me instead of giving it to 10 year olds. I have grown up for nothing.
• neworbit 15y ago
  Yeah, Google's pretty much required to do this by US law though (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) - I'll leave the "think of the children" jokes to other folks.
  • sp332 15y ago
    But COPPA is a US law. There's no reason to enforce it on a kid who lives near Amsterdam.
    • TallGuyShort 15y ago
      Google's already giving you a free service. Why should Google go through all that paperwork because you didn't read or comply with their Terms of Service? These people need to suck it up and find another way for their kid to talk to his grandparents.
      • sp332 15y ago
        The main complaint of the article is that most social networks have US-centric TOS. It's not just about finding a different provider, it's that they might not be able to find a social network that doesn't enforce COPPA internationally.
        • deleted 15y ago
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        • epochwolf 15y ago
          Given that the data is probably stored in the US, COPPA would probably apply to any data collected outside of the US.
          • TallGuyShort 15y ago
            Actually COPPA only applies to subjects who live in the U.S., so his point is a fair one. Even so, according to Wikipedia it requires a large amount of paperwork. Although I agree developers have a responsibility to be aware of this, I think these parents have a greater responsibility not to pass this attitude on to the next generation.
            • epochwolf 15y ago
              The law applies to entities with any commercial presence in the US collecting any personal information from children. It makes no distinction where the children are located or where the data is stored. http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/coppa1.htm http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/coppa1.htm
• corin_ 15y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but the under 13 law (in US and some other places, or "policy" rather than law for Google internationally) is only without a guardian's permission, so if a letter was written on behalf of him, they would reactivate it? Well, certainly that's the case with the law - as to Google policy, that's where you should correct me if I'm wrong. Edit, on a side note, if the author is the poster here (or reads HN either way): I really like your writing. The story itself normally wouldn't make me care a huge amount (a short version is "a ten year old can't use a 13 and over service"), but I actually found myself really empathising and feeling upset on his behalf.
  • avolcano 15y ago
    Last I remember, they required the parent's permission in the form of a fax or some other annoying format, so many sites just didn't bother accepting permission and banned under-13 users. This was 4-5 years ago, though. I pretty much got used to lying about my age everywhere (every PHPBB forum had the same age-confirmation form before the registration process, for example), and I guess this kid probably will too. It'll be annoying for him when he actually does turn 13 and has to figure out how to change his DOB on sites (a lot of which don't let you).
  • masklinn 15y ago
    > so if a letter was written on behalf of him, they would reactivate it? Question is: written to whom? What is the channel for that? There seems to be none. No way to explain and no recourse. And that's why we can't have nice things.
    • cageface 15y ago
      You can have free email because Google doesn't have to pay people to manually process and evaluate these kinds of requests. Ignorant, self-serving politicians and their sheepish, easily manipulated constituents are the reason we can't have nice things.
• dexen 15y ago
  Why is that parents can't give consent to their young (<13y/o) child using Google account? Parent logs into his/her account, parent creates kid's account, parent states real age (10 years), parent expresses consent, child uses the new account. Is it that complex?
  • nl 15y ago
    Why is that parents can't give consent to their young (<13y/o) child using Google account? Because then when <insert bad thing> happens on the internet, the service provider gets blamed, even if the parent obviously should have been watching their child.
  • muuh-gnu 15y ago
    > Parent logs into his/her account, parent creates kid's account, parent states real age (10 years), parent expresses consent, How do you prove that it's the kids parent thats giving this permission and not a random adult the kid asked to pretend being his parent? > Why is that parents can't give consent to their young (<13y/o) child using Google account? Because the parents probably have to provide written proof and it costs Google money to process such non-automated requests. You basically have millions of children below the age of 13. If everybody wanted to sign up their kids, Google would have to hire people to do nothing else than to just process the written or faxed permissions. Its way easier and cheaper to just exclude pre-13s from the service.
    • adrianb 15y ago
      How do you prove that a user enters the real date of birth when creating an account?
      • dspillett 15y ago
        You don't, but the chain of responsibility is short. You gave a fake age, that is against the rules, your account is suspended for that plus being underage in the first place. Managing and auditing a longer chain of responsibility, and setting up the rules for what happens if something in the chain becomes known to have been false, can be a royal pain both technically and legally (particularly when you consider that different countries have widely varying laws regarding who can be responsible for what, what rights there are to start with and what you can sign away, and so forth). The complications can multiply up very quickly once are considering more than one entity (the one that sets up the account and is claiming to be doing so truthfully), and once you allow chains like that you could have a chain of many people who each vouched for each other and each could be fake in some way.
• tommi 15y ago
  It's a sensational story about the required 13 years of age to use the services.
• ck2 15y ago
  Valuable lessons to teach about backups and maybe not putting data into the cloud that can be local. My 2012 project is going to be to quit gmail somehow and get back to imap with local storage. Why not buy the kid his own domain name and teach him how to set it up and use a local email program (Thunderbird?)
  • troels 15y ago
    While that might be the answer for you, it's not a usable solution for me and I guess for most people. Having my mail available from everywhere is an important feature. I guess I could set up my own webmail, but I'll be hard pressed to find something that matches the quality of gmail. Oh well, it's not like RMS didn't warn us ...
    • ck2 15y ago
      Try imap for email from everywhere with http://roundcube.net/ http://roundcube.net/ for self-hosted webmail.
    • Silhouette 15y ago
      You make a good point, but I wonder how quickly a suitable solution would evolve if we could kill the momentum of services like Google Mail a bit. The tools to do local mail hosting, IMAP, webmail, etc. all exist. From personal experience, configuring them is a pain in the backside if you're not an experienced sysadmin, which of course includes almost everyone. If that could be overcome, the tech is there. As for hosting, there are various blog platforms where you have a choice between hosting the code yourself, either on your own machine or on a system included with your personal ISP account, or using a site such as wordpress.com where they do the maintenance and in some cases charge money for extras but the software and data formats are basically the same. I see no reason a similar model couldn't work for e-mail, and if a particular e-mail platform started to take off, there is no reason for ISPs not to support it locally; most of them have always offered some sort of included e-mail mailbox and webmail facility anyway, just not of the calibre of Google Mail and not necessarily easily compatible with other systems. Basically, I think the problems with a better solution that doesn't leave you at the mercy of a big organisation like Google are genuine but not insurmountable. It's more about usability and standardisation/interoperability than about technical issues.
• w1ntermute 15y ago
  Who gives their real DOB when registering for a website? I've been using January 1st, 1975 as my birthday ever since I started using the internet.
  • deleted 15y ago
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  • gary4gar 15y ago
    Great idea!
  • darklajid 15y ago
    Right. We're talking about a social network here, where other people are interacting with you based on the data you entered. Sure, you can fake your birthday (and interests, gender etc..), but if you do this you're either not grasping the idea of these social networks or you're creating one of these 'I'm just in to snoop on people I know' account. So I certainly think it makes sense to give out real data, iff you plan to use the service as intended. That said, the bigger problem is that Google happily accepted his date of birth in Google+, added it to the Google account and afterwards locked him out of every Google service. That's crap. And it just proves once more how Google aggregates all the data about you. If I fill in an innocent field on a 'fun' service, should it really have consequences for (or even be connected to) my main online identity?
    • Jach 15y ago
      I can't speak on how social media is supposed to be used (since I don't even have a facebook account), but wouldn't the kid mostly be in contact with people who know him or her outside of the computer (such as friends and family), making the "displayed age" (you can turn the display off, right?) useless? Faking a birthday seems pretty harmless and I don't see how it would hinder your experience on anything unless you enter the wrong age that gets you banned like this instance. When I was in my early teens I role played on a game and met a lot of people there I'm still in contact with, I interacted with 20+ year olds when I was 13 and there were a few younger people too. Of course, I didn't fake my interests/gender/etc. but I've never been in the habit of storing age/location info with a private service; it's available publicly anyway, but you have to use inductive reasoning to link the data. If you want people to know your birthday, I don't see why you can't just tell them in person or email or whatever and leave the "official" fake birthday what it is.
• deleted 15y ago
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• pathik 15y ago
  What's the big deal? Google is required by law to do that. Enter a fake birth date.
  • rfrey 15y ago
    The big deal is that the current account is locked with the data inaccessible. It requires proof of age to unlock.
  • darklajid 15y ago
    The fact is, he didn't need to enter a birth date. GMail didn't ask for one. Youtube did. So he only had a GMail account. He joined Google+ and _could_ optionally add a day of birth, because - well. You want your friends in a social network to post 'All the best' or whatever. So he provided this option freely, to share it with his circles of friends. Not to link it to his main online identity. I don't think that it is obvious that there's a neat 'Hah! Another one entered his DOB in Google+ and is < 13, let's shut him out' trigger.
    • mechanical_fish 15y ago
      And here we have illustration #447 of why people who aren't database administrators neither need nor want universal identity. Gmail did not have to know this kid was a kid. But it spied on his social network and now it knows. A human exhibiting this same behavior - peeking in his or her customers' windows to see if they're technically violating terms of service in their private lives - would have been called a nosy busybody. This is a major reason to avoid Google services. They are learning to better simulate a company that cares about privacy, but it's all still Big Brother at the back end.
      • Vivtek 15y ago
        That's the most cogent point I've seen in this entire debate.
        • DiabloD3 15y ago
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• ComputerGuru 15y ago
  COPPA gives an (easy?) way out - the parents just have to fax in their consent for their underage son to use their service. There is no law stopping the kid, Google probably just doesn't want to be inundated with such requests.
  • OstiaAntica 15y ago
    It isn't that easy, and even with permission it might not be legal or appropriate for children to use some Google + services.
  • lambda 15y ago
    Fax? Easy? So now you need to go through some pointless, antiquated charade just to indicate that you consent to let your kids use the service? It would cost far more to have someone looking at the faxes and correlating them with the appropriate accounts than they gain by allowing minors to use their site. Google is not a charity; COPPA has made it far to expensive to bother keeping profiles for minors, so they just ban it, like just about every other significant online service.
    • pygy_ 15y ago
      The relevant information could easily be OCRed from the faxes (even more if they provide a standard form), only requiring a one click human validation.
• beaumartinez 15y ago
  Can he not request his mail over POP3 or IMAP and store it locally? Or is his login terminally locked? What an appalling user experience—and on so many levels. It should have at least warned him that by setting his age he was in violation of the TOS.
  • someone13 15y ago
    This is actually my first thought too, but apparently it's completely locked out. See: http://www.sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-son-cry.html#comment-122527 http://www.sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made...
• tybris 15y ago
  I think he learned a valuable lesson about how to use the Internet: lie about everything.
  • boryas 15y ago
    yes, using the "intenet"
  • muuh-gnu 15y ago
    And those parents seem to be beyond repair. They should be experienced enough about life to not teach their son useless ivory-tower ethis like "dont lie". He will find out about the power of lying sooner or later himself, and every year he tries to abide by their logic, he will be hurt, lied to and deceived by others who have mastered it before him. Depending on how much damage they cause by such a nonsensical upbringing, he might end up hating them later. By telling him to be the only one not to lie, they are basically lying to him about how the "real world" works.
    • wlievens 15y ago
      The kid is ten...
      • deleted 15y ago
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    • wollw 15y ago
      You don't have to lack ethics yourself to be unphased by others' lack of them. I don't know if you're just trolling or something but I think this needs to be addressed either way. Dishonesty has the distinct disadvantage of leaving you with the need to maintain a fabrication; honesty has the huge advantage of meaning you have nothing to hide. If you slip up your reputation is tarnished and even if you don't you have to actually maintain the lie. If you really believe the best way through life is to lie your way through it then I really pity you.
      • 15y ago
• Joakal 15y ago
  Puzzle Pirates handles this better by freezing the game account until the user reaches the estimate legal age. Avoids COPPA hassles and issues with deletion.
  • OstiaAntica 15y ago
    They are still violating COPPA. They can't knowingly store child's information without parental permission. Note: I worked on this issue for a Fortune 100 company when COPPA was passed.
• dschobel 15y ago
  Great headline, total non-story. It'll be interesting to see how high this one goes on HN...
• savramescu 15y ago
  This is most likely an automated trigger that blocked & scheduled for deletion that account. Even for a company as big as Google it's impossible to have these type of things reviewed by humans. What I do hope is that they'll create a channel for complaints if the user should want to. What I don't understand is the way the parent behaves. He knows he's in the wrong and he still feels outraged because Google blocked the e-mail. Even though nobody reads the ToS it doesn't mean that they are moot. Google didn't make his son cry, his father did.
  • speleding 15y ago
    IANAL, but the TOS is probably moot in the country where he is from (the Netherlands), so he is not in the wrong. Dutch law has several requirements for a TOS to be valid and simply clicking "I agree" is not enough.
    • savramescu 15y ago
      But isn't Google subject to American laws, being an American based company? I'm just asking, I don't have experience in these type of legal matters, but it seems to me that they are supposed to do that.
      • aidenn0 15y ago
        The Netherlands will say it's subject to the Netherlands' laws, and the US will say it's subject to US law. What actually gets enforced is a matter of diplomacy.
• goombastic 15y ago
  A minor is not likely to have immediate spending power, only influence. Google is in the business of making sellers meet buyers. No matter how hard we look at this, that's the fundamental nature of "the Google." It is probable that Google's segmentation of the market shows most minors as being engaged best via TV. Most of us tend to forget that we are the product that Google is marketing.
  • goombastic 15y ago
    What's with the downvotes? This is the truth, your data is the only thing important to Google.
• ern 15y ago
  I think it's unfair that under 13s aren't allowed to use Gmail. But being able to use email, code in Python and use Powerpoint, doesn't mean he has the maturity to use social networking. The internet is a cruel place, and hysteria about online predators aside, I think that the biggest risk to kids is from their own peer group. I recently encountered a fake profile on FB that was harassing high school kids, including a cousin, by spreading rumours about them. The rumours seemed silly to an adult, but the reactions of the victims on the perpetrator's wall were telling: begging, swearing, threatening (incidentally, Facebook's abuse system was pretty useless, I got the account killed because I figured out who the bully probably was, and dropped a few not-so-subtle-hints threatening to expose her). If teenagers are so distressed by online bullying, it would be worse for pre-teens. I have sympathy for Alex and his parents, but I don't blame the law for blocking young children from accessing these services, especially social networking sites.
  • vermontdevil 15y ago
    I disagree with you. I do not believe government regulations in these areas work. 13 is an arbitrary age. Bully happens even after age of 13. It should be up to the parents to monitor and regulate their kids' internet access. Parents not government has the responsibility of their children's welfare. Some kids can be a bit more mature at a younger age, some don't. Like many prohibition laws, this one won't work.
  • chunky1994 15y ago
    I agree completely, as a teenager myself despite wanting to stay away from such petty, defaming conversations, you eventually get hauled in, either because one of your friends starts believing them in which case you're social life is at stake, or because any new acquaintances will be sorely misled by those comments.
  • mambodog 15y ago
    The issue is not with blocking access to Google+, it is with the (impending) deletion of his ~2 years worth of emails. I don't believe you need to be 13 years old to use email, I know I was using it at around Alex's age.
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• chrisbuc 15y ago
  Interestingly, I've just taken a look at the gmail signup process, and the birthdate field appears when I select location "US" but not when you select "UK" I'm sure I remember seeing an google advert recently (in the UK) where a father sends emails to his child over several years for the child to receive when they're old enough to use email - and I'm sure the child's email was a gmail account (I may be mistaken, though).
  • chrisbuc 15y ago
    Aa ha- petewailes (above) just posted a link to the advert I remember seeing: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726225 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726225
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  • rfrey 15y ago
    call your congressman if you feel the law is unjust He probably doesn't want to make the long-distance call to his congressman, given that he's in the Netherlands.
    • deleted 15y ago
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    • Vivtek 15y ago
      His mother's American. She'll be talking to her congresscritter; I know her.
• sltkr 15y ago
  I hate to be that guy that links to xkcd comics, but here it goes anyway: http://xkcd.com/743/ http://xkcd.com/743/ Google is under no obligation to allow 13-year-olds on their service anyway, and I'm sure the age limit comes from legal restrictions, not just ageism on Google's part. Fortunately, e-mail is already an open protocol, and you can get a working e-mail address anywhere. I understand the attraction of Gmail (it's free, user-friendly and offers a lot of storage) but it comes with some conditions; that's part of the deal.
• petewailes 15y ago
  This also surely means that the Dear Sophie video shouldn't be possible, as the kid, having just been born is thus under 13. Link for those who don't know what I'm on about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk
• scotty79 15y ago
  He forgot to teach his kid important lesson. On the internet you can and should lie, cheat and steal, just don't harm real people.
• DannoHung 15y ago
  Google needs a fucking customer support line already. Make it a 900 number if they need to and charge $20 per call, but for the love of cheese the number of times something goes horribly wrong and there is little to no recourse is silly. They refuse to let people pay for their services and thus establish a billing verification channel but they're asking users to put tons of important information into them with no recourse if something does happen.
  • deleted 15y ago
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    • ulf 15y ago
      The service is not free, you just don't pay with money.
      • Herald_MJ 15y ago
        Even more reason to offer a support line then?
    • cemerick 15y ago
      Google accounts aren't just yet-another-email-address anymore. While I like to think of my gmail account as a throwaway (I still only use it for testing email delivery from my proper email accounts), my entire Android "profile" is linked through it. If I fat-finger some signup form somewhere, or my stupid cousin decides to play a prank on me with my signed-in Google account, or something else bad happens unrelated to this "underage"/COPPA policy, I have no recourse to recover from a lockout? That's stupid, and impacts something very important to me. While Google may or may not get any money from my use of Android, they are (by their own hand) accountable for my experience there, which includes not ever being irrevocably locked out of the "cloud" resources that the phone depends upon.
      • rdtsc 15y ago
        So how much are you paying for your gmail account? Probably $0. Guess how much time should Google wants to spend providing you with tech support? Probably 0 (unless you manage to create negative PR then not supporting you might cost them some bad karma so then it is cheaper to just have someone call you and fix your issue). Expecting to get something for nothing is unrealistic. To Google you are just one of hundreds of millions of users whose surfing habits and email account usage they indirectly sell to their real paying customers. If you wants technical service you have to pay for it.
• tobylane 15y ago
  I was expecting that the child searched some odd word combination that is some horrible (yet brilliant) internet meme like rule 34 or jailbait. This is comparatively boring, COPPA faxes?
• metaprinter 15y ago
  On the internet, I was born in 1901.
• defdac 15y ago
  This got me thinking. Are there an equivalent of streetsmart on the web - "websmart"? I can't see trace of it in this kids parents or the kid himself. Isn't this sort of useless restriction the first thing you learn to circumvent when you enter the web? It's a web page/service for god sake, not a life threatening mechanical contraption that might chop your head of if used improperly.
• csomar 15y ago
  This is why I'm going to setup my own mail server. I don't want to wake up some days and find out that all my emails where deleted or locked because of any stupid or not stupid reason. Emails are quite important. They hold very important/confidential information. Your email is also the key to remember forgotten passwords, your conversations with clients, and many other things. I have purchased the cheapest Linode VPS for this particular reason. I tried Live Mail (the Windows Application) with IMAP and it's really cool. The editor is also better than the Gmail one. I'll miss some features, but it's okay. Seriously, if you don't want to get hurt, get a VPS or a dedicated. It's not expensive. You host your emails, websites, repositories and everything. You do scheduled backups to Amazon S3 and you are just fine. I'm going to write about how awesome a dedicated server is, once I complete setting up my server and create my blog.
  • vacri 15y ago
    That might be a little on the difficult side for a 10-year-old to set up.
    • csomar 15y ago
      Yes. Unless his father did it for him, this needs lot of technical knowledge. However, I'm targeting the HN audience with my comment.
  • AretNCarlsen 15y ago
    If you give a niece or nephew an account on your mailserver, you may need to get parental permission from your sibling to maintain COPPA compliance. :) P.S. - Verbal authorization won't do! The permission has to be given in the form of a fax, credit card number, digitally signed email, or via a toll-free telephone number.
  • munin 15y ago
    the irony in saying "man the cloud sucks, I'm going to run my own servers on the cloud and also backup data from that server onto the cloud" is delicious
• felipeoc 15y ago
  In Brazil every kid knows how to lie the date of birth in order to create an Orkut account.
• SMrF 15y ago
  It boggles the mind that this was actually implemented. Some poor schmuck had to sit there and write the code to delete little kid's emails.
• yanw 15y ago
  Your son joined a service he wasn't supposed to, then joined an adjacent service that still requires an invite and that triggered a mechanism that kicked him out and he gets upset, you evidently don't think it's your fault for not reading the TOS and not being familiar with the american COPPA law and you think it's Google's fault. Congratulations on proving that link-baiting works very well even on HN.
  • paulgb 15y ago
    Are you saying you read every TOS you agree to?
    • yanw 15y ago
      I tend to when my children are involved.
      • kenjackson 15y ago
        So you'd forbid your 12 year old from using Google to do searches?
        • jmilloy 15y ago
          Yes or no, at least this person wouldn't be surprised when the account was shut down.
        • corin_ 15y ago
          You don't have to be 13 to search Google as an anonymous visitor.. you'll notice that their TOS is at http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS under "accounts", if you don't make an account it's irrelevant - hence anyone can visit the Google homepage and search for something without being told that, by doing that, they are agreeing to anything.
          • kenjackson 15y ago
            At the very least its not clear. Let me give my evidence as to why the TOS applies to search: 1) While, as you note, the TOS URL contains "accounts", it is accessible in two clicks from Google.com. Simply click the "About" link and the TOS is on the About Google page. It's on a page that has nothing to do with accounts per se, but is the high-level page about the Google company and services. 2) Here's is the first paragraph in the TOS: Your use of Google’s products, software, services and web sites (referred to collectively as the “Services” in this document and excluding any services provided to you by Google under a separate written agreement) is subject to the terms of a legal agreement between you and Google. “Google” means Google Inc., whose principal place of business is at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States. This document explains how the agreement is made up, and sets out some of the terms of that agreement. They don't call out anything about accounts at all here. They seem to be referring to all services. 3) They actually have a section which is about accounts. If the whole document was about accounts they wouldn't have a specific section about it. Here is the opening paragraph of that section: In order to access certain Services, you may be required to provide information about yourself (such as identification or contact details) as part of the registration process for the Service, or as part of your continued use of the Services. You agree that any registration information you give to Google will always be accurate, correct and up to date. Notice the use of the term "certain Services". That is, certain services require an account, but not all. This document as a whole is referring to all services. If you think this TOS only applies to accounts, I think you'll need stronger information than simply the URL where the document is located. I certainly don't think the URL is part of the legal agreement. And if you read the TOS by itself, it seems pretty clear that it includes Google search.
• Poiesis 15y ago
  Is it a TOS violation for someone else to use your account? Adult signs up, kid uses account. Seemingly all perfectly legal, right?
• dholowiski 15y ago
  Should have gotten him his own domain name (through someone other than google) and used backupify to back up his email. Then when google decides to shut you down, you still own your identity, and your data. Actually this applies for everybody, under or over 13.
  • jarek 15y ago
    Or used any other method to back-up your personal data...
• zwieback 15y ago
  I must be a total minority here but as a parent of a 9 and 11 year old I'm shocked how many commenters recommend "just lie" or even teach their kids that lying is ok on the internet. Maybe this particular kid is a total outlier but I can say for sure that my kids and their friends are definitely not ready for any kind of sophisticated reasoning about when to apply which morals. At that age they are also fairly unable to separate fact from ficition and news from gossip. The age limit of 13 seems pretty reasonable to me and if as a parent you think your kid is so mature (hint: he isn't) then it is definitely your responsibility to act as a guardian. Google didn't make your son cry, you made your son cry. And that's fine, we all make our kids cry from time to time. Explain the mistake you made to your kid, figure out what to do in the future and move on.
  • palish 15y ago
    It seems reasonable to you that you need to be 13 or older to use email? To talk to his grandparents?
    • zwieback 15y ago
      Not to use email but to be allowed to sign up for a general purpose email account like GMail without any kind of parental consent.
      • yuvadam 15y ago
        Continuing that line of logic - Should < 13 year olds not be allowed to use 'general purpose' means of communication such as telephones or, god forbid, snail mail?
        • georgefox 15y ago
          Personally, I don't think they should be able to create an account with Vonage or Verizon or whoever and sign up for telephone service, no. I have no problem with them using their parents' account(s), though.
        • 15y ago
• stallker 15y ago
  Al giorno d'oggi i servizi di hosting costano veramente poco, così se qualcuno mi chiede di consigliargli un buon servizio di posta elettronica (gmail, hotmail, ...) io consiglio di registrarsi un dominio e di attivarsi le proprie caselle di posta, gestendole in quasi completa libertà, invece di sottostare ai capricci delle aziende 'che non vogliono essere il male'. Mi ricordo ancora oggi del mio account @mac.com che doveva restare gratuito per sempre... e poi per potere accedere mi chiesero di pagare (e ancora peggio di possedere una carta di credito... ai tempi le prepagate non esistevano ancora). Scusate se scrivo in italiano... se in qualche modo questo commento può essere utile (e cioè se vedrò un paio di punti assegnati) cercherò di tradurlo al meglio :) edit: thanks to Vivtek for translation :)
  • Vivtek 15y ago
    Hosting services today really don't cost much, so if anybody asks me to recommend a good email service (gmail, hotmail) I recommend registering a domain and setting up their own mailbox, providing complete freedom, instead of subjecting themselves to the caprices of the company "that doesn't want to do evil". I still remember my @mac.com account that was supposed to stay free forever - and then I had to pay to access it (and also had to have a credit card - at the time, prepaid cards didn't exist). Sorry for writing in Italian, if this comment could be useful in any way (and if I see some points) I'll try to translate it better :) There. Fixed that for you. Thanks for making the day a little more interesting.
• jellicle 15y ago
  ATTENTION GOOGLE: REGARDLESS of what you think you need to do to comply with COPPA or any other law in the United States or any other jurisdiction; IF you have automated processes that cancel accounts and freeze data and do not offer at a minimum, an opportunity for the person affected to retrieve his/her data entrusted with you; THEN, this will keep happening (Google-made-me-cry stories). THEREFORE, in order to reduce the number of Google-made-me-cry stories, you should: IMPLEMENT a system to allowed users adversely affected by your automated processes a way to RETRIEVE their data, all the time, no matter what, come hell or high water. IN FACT the account_delete() function shouldn't even take an ARGUMENT about whether to allow data retrieval; account_delete() should have a non-overridable call to allow_account_export_for_thirty_days(), if you KNOW WHAT I MEAN, which I nearly think that you DO. BECAUSE this isn't rocket surgery. AND BECAUSE we get upset if we lose our data. We become WROTH. You wouldn't like us when we are WROTH. IT is the LEAST you could do. Seriously, it's the minimum. The absolute least. You could do more, if you wanted to. But this is the least. SINCERELY, The Internet.
  • OstiaAntica 15y ago
    Under COPPA, once Google realizes the data is a child's personal information, they have to immediately delete the account.
    • jellicle 15y ago
      Your statement is not true. In fact Google's only obligation under the law is not to make PUBLICLY available children's personal information without parental consent, and not to continue to collect personal information from a verified child without parental consent. There's even a specific safe harbor for Google to disclose a child's personal information to the child's parent.
      • OstiaAntica 15y ago
        No, you don't know what you are talking about. I ran the COPPA compliance for a Fortune 100 company when the law was passed. There is no public/private distinction in the law. "The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and Rule apply to individually identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full name, home address, email address, telephone number or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact the child." http://www.coppa.org/comply.htm http://www.coppa.org/comply.htm
• maeon3 15y ago
  You are exposing the kid to adult problems, and expecting an infant to behave in in a legal and socially acceptable manner. I'm not saying not to let the kid on the internet, I'm saying that this needs to be an educational experience for a kid, not a situation where we all complain about regrettable situations. Why don't we let kids drive cars? All the kid has to do is lie on the form when taking the drivers test.
  • sofal 15y ago
    Why don't we let kids drive cars? Because they could kill other people with them? I don't know, what do you think? I guess that's just like email, right?
    • maeon3 15y ago
      We don't let kids drive cars because they will hurt themselves and hurt others. The fact that not being able to drive a car makes a child cry is not an argument that the child should have lied on the drivers test so he could. Children need to be trained in the way they should interact with the world, not let loosed to figure out how to do whatever they want to do however they want. The parents need a way to train the kid in the proper use of this tool. The internet is not for young children. It is an extremely powerful tool that you can hurt yourself and others with. We also don't let children travel the world alone to unknown places, visiting and interacting with unknown people. Why not? Because the kids will get into trouble and harm themselves and the parents will be oblivious.
• svankie 15y ago
  I think -and with all due respect to you, and your son-... this is extremely exaggerated.
• jdvolz 15y ago
  Am I the only person who thinks this is a great way to teach your son about civil disobedience? It's clear this law, while well intended, isn't meant to cover this specific situation. I would argue this type of civil disobedience is the first step in getting the law changed (in this case, to something more reasonable, or requiring that parental consent be available and expedient). It's important for children to understand that laws aren't written in stone and that if they dislike a law they can work to change it. Feeling helpless and acting helpless isn't in the best interest of anyone's child or our children's generation as a whole.
  • bryanlarsen 15y ago
    I think it's a horrible way to teach about civil disobedience. The point of civil disobedience is to get the law changed. By quietly lying about your age, you're doing the opposite, you're making it harder to get the law changed. Civil disobedience is about adding friction to the system as an incentive to change the law. By doing something nobody can notice you're adding grease. It's not civil disobedience if nobody notices what you're doing. It's not civil disobedience if you aren't inconveniencing people in power. By lying about your age, you're breaking the law purely for selfish benefit, which is not the lesson a parent wants to teach a child. Sacrificing himself by following the law, and spreading the story widely as the author and his son have done will do much more to get the law changed.
    • zacharypinter 15y ago
      Not every law is good, and just because something is written to law doesn't mean that you should blindly obey it. I think the grandparent post is right in that this is a nice way of illustrating that point. However, I definitely see your point that quietly lying about his age is likely not the best way to get the law changed.
    • edw 15y ago
      Thank you for your comment. People seem to have no idea what civil disobedience is. In addition to the good points you made, I'd also like to point out a couple things: First, this is not civil disobedience, it's corporate disobedience. And second, people seem to have forgotten that civil disobedience entails putting your ass on the line, in the form of publicly and flagrantly breaking a law. The point of civil disobedience is to appeal to people's consciences, to call out a wrong far greater than your law-breaking, and to willingly open yourself to prosecution in order to make that point. (That's why Anonymous isn't committing civil disobedience until they turn themselves in and allow themselves to be on trial in order to call attention to the unalloyed benefit to society they seem to think they're providing.) I don't see how Google's disallowing ten year olds to have Gmail accounts is a wrong: it seems more like a simple business decision in the face of a law that's designed to keep companies from preying on ten year olds by inundating them with marketing. We all know the poster's child is special, but for all of the kids who aren't the offspring of übermenshen, this is a fight that maybe's not worth fighting.
• woodall 15y ago
  Just a suggestion, pretty sure it won't work, but has the author tried downloading the messages using IMAP or POP? Other than that, it really does suck but it's not a quick or easy fix.
• dstein 15y ago
  Orwell would have called this situation getting "ungoogled".
• raganesh 15y ago
  Google recently ran the "Dear Sophie" commercial. The core theme of the commercial is against Google's ToS. TechCrunch article on the same along with Google's BS response: http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/09/attention-dear-sophie-inspired-parents-you-cant-actually-create-a-google-account-for-your-kid/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/09/attention-dear-sophie-inspi...
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• yawniek 15y ago
  backups, backups,backups... he could start writing the book: learn backups the hard way
• thricedotted 15y ago
  I was 10 when COPPA first came into effect, but even before that I never put my actual age/birthday into accounts I registered, and if it was an email service that required an "actual" name from me, I always used some silly pseudonym. All this so I could play Scrabble, chess, and Battlefield with strangers on various websites, email my fourth grade teacher, make a Homestead chatroom, and tell the internet how much I loved SpongeBob SquarePants. Until I turned 13, I never batted an eyelash about lying about my age on the internet -- it was simply something I thought I was expected to do, not because I thought the government wanted to keep me off the internet (which they did, but my parents didn't, so whatever), but because if everybody at least pretended to be over 13, then those under 13 might be safer. My offline and online identities didn't merge until I was 17 or 18...at about the time Facebook started picking up speed. Now, I don't think that's the right mentality to have, and it's based on false logic since being a teen still makes you prey on the internet, but it's the mentality that was imbued in me as a person who started using the internet pre-COPPA restrictions and, more importantly, pre-Facebook -- in an age when people weren't EXPECTED to have their offline identities connected to their online ones. Especially children. His parents obviously knew about COPPA restrictions due to the YouTube account business, although I'm still confused as to why he wasn't asked for his age/birthdate on the Gmail registration page. No, their son shouldn't have put his age into Google+, especially if he already know that he couldn't use it to create a YouTube account; yes, Google should at least allow data export for the account (although they are by no means obligated to) and/or provide a streamlined process for parents to authorize the accounts of any users under 13. I remember GameFAQs reacted to COPPA by locking the account of any user under 13 until their 13th birthday -- this would be more reasonable to me, but it sounds like the personal data storage issue gets in the way of that. Anyway, to me, the more interesting thing is that this post made me realize that I came "of age" (i.e., reached a point where I would be considered something of an adult rather than a complete child) at the same time the internet identity paradigm shifted from relative anonymity and "alter egos" to something much more closely interconnected to a person's real life. And so I wonder: if Alex had been born in 1991 rather than 2001, would this have happened with the theoretical Hotmail account he might have had? No, I think, because once upon a time, it was pretty much expected that a person would not be who they said they were on the internet -- and that was absolutely fine. And even moreso, back in the days when you COULD be a child on the internet, I don't think most children wanted to be known AS CHILDREN. Because seriously, who the heck wants to play Scrabble with an 8-year-old kid? So, I guess as a kid who grew up before social networking became big, I still think kids are better off lying about their ages anyway. Those who know them in real life will understand that they're circumventing COPPA, and those who don't will possibly be less prone to being creepy/condescending/what-have-you. While I'm sure that this can be interpreted as victim blaming and everybody should have a right to feel safe on the internet while using their true identity, COPPA serves as something as an arbitrary age of consent, since 10-year-olds could unwittingly provide information that gets them kidnapped, just as 15-year-olds can unwittingly make babies. But if you're a 10-year-old who's mature enough to be conscious about privacy, or a 15-year-old who's mature enough to know about safe sex and birth control, then have at it, I say. The system is there to protect, but if you're not in need of the system's protection, then go ahead and circumvent it. tldr, sorry your son cried, but it would have been easy enough to prevent, and pretty much the expected thing to do during the pre-social networking era.
• motters 15y ago
  Well, when you live inside of a walled garden the proprietor can kick you, or your son, off the grass for any ephemeral or arbitrary reason they happen to have just thought of.
• dendory 15y ago
  He could take that as a challenge and learn to buy his own domain, build his own site, install his own webmail system. That way he will never have to worry about a cloud service shutting him down.
• jpr 15y ago
  Yay, let's link every service ever together, what could possibly go wrong!
• publicplanking 15y ago
  First World Problems
• coffie6423 15y ago
  I have been playing with computers ever since I remember. My first CPU was 8 bit. At that point I was 7. I have not stopped my obsession with it. In the meantime, before I reached 18, I had disregarded laws that will not allow me to access sites. I have not paid much attention to these laws. Thinking back, though, I think I should not have been spending too much time playing around on computers, but enjoying playing outside.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• michaelschade 15y ago
  What would be really awesome of Google to do then is, if they do lock an account out due to an age-based TOS violation, still provide access to Google Takeout (and add Gmail to the supported services list) so the kid could at least easily get his data back. IANAL, so I don't know if he technically would not be allowed to access Google Takeout either via the TOS, but if Google's lawyers could incorporate an exception of some sort for age-based violations, then this would at least be a super nice thing for them to do.
• deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
• gaetanomarano 15y ago
  [ goopl.us ] millions people will cry due to Google -- --
• RyanKearney 15y ago
  ABC Liquor made my son cry when they denied him the sale of alcohol at the age of 8. No, seriously, there's an age limit that he agreed to when he signed up.
  • nealb 15y ago
    The limit is still unreasonable and the support procedure for solving the problem is terrible.
    • RyanKearney 15y ago
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protec... It's a law.
• Iv 15y ago
  Am I an asshole if my first thought was "that's what you get by putting your data in the cloud" ?
• dkarl 15y ago
  Sheesh, teach him about appropriate times to lie, already. You shouldn't tell anyone on the internet you're under eighteen unless you're signing up for summer camp.
• brudgers 15y ago
  I will agree that children under 13 are perfectly capable of using email safely with adult supervision. However, the circumstances involved show why 13 years of age may be considered a reasonable minimum age for using Google's services, because the incident which sparked the account being locked was a 10 year old signing up for a social network designed with the assumption that its users would be capable of make sophisticated decisions regarding privacy and be reasonably able to detect ill intent or predatory behavior in an online environment. While I can understand that the motives which led to the creation of the original email account were based on sound parenting and offered clear benefits for a child, it is hard to imagine sound rationales for giving a 10 year old unfettered access to a social network. From email to social network there is a quantum leap in the level of sophistication required to safely navigate the service and I see Google's stance as not only justified but reasonable. The argument that it is ok to lie about one's age breaks pretty quickly - very few people are comfortable with 12 year old girls telling grown men they are 18.
• SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  I wonder if Google was headquartered in Utah, where the number of engineers with kids would undoubtably be MUCH higher, if this would be a solved problem already. The law certainly has ways of letting under 13 onto the web, just ask Disney.
• mscarborough 15y ago
  I'm surprised at all the histrionics going on in the article and this thread. "Google ... plans to cut him off from his family until he's 13." First, take a deep breath. Then, get another email address that you can control, and back it up. See if the grandparents still have copies of their correspondence for the kid to read. Use this as an opportunity to teach the importance of backing up data that is important to you, and why you can't trust free online services to always look out for you. Currently I'm in India, and today witnessed children sifting through open piles of garbage and panhandling in the middle of traffic. So it's kind of maddening to then witness the stunning lack of perspective these parents demonstrate when their child is temporarily cut off from site update emails and using chat to talk to them while sitting in the same room. Yes, I understand the data loss making a 10 year old "enormously upset", but if these seemingly technically-savvy parents didn't yet realize the necessity of owning and managing data that is important to the family, then I'd hope that point isn't lost. In the time spent to write a hysterical blog and more responses in the comments, a simple solution to ensure this did not happen again could have been implemented.
  • yhlasx 15y ago
    And i don't see the point for blaming Google, at all.
• VladRussian 15y ago
  this is one of the reasons you never enter real data into online services
• blahedo 15y ago
  I'm surprised at how many people in this thread are focusing on the "Google locked the account" as the bad part of this. The clear fuck-up on Google's part is rather that they didn't provide any avenue for Alex's parents to accept the contract on his behalf. Nobody would be complaining (other than the usual light grumbling) if the lockout message had been something like this: "Parent permission required! Our records show that you are not yet 13, so we have blocked access to your account. To restore access: If you are at least 13, click here to send proof of that. If you are under 13, have a parent or guardian click here to link your account to theirs and accept the terms of service on your behalf."
• wnoise 15y ago
  Minors: the last minority it's still okay (and legally mandated) to discriminate against.
• flocial 15y ago
  I think a lot of people are missing a more important discussion. Should Google be allowed to cross-check a customer's data across all their services? Think about it. If you or your company uses Google Apps, you have Gmail, Youtube, adSense, Ad Mob, and accounts on a bunch of other services that got bought, they know what you search for, and now they even have an approximation of your social graph with Google+ (although it's not much different from your Google contacts). Banks are regulated by laws that restrict certain arms of their businesses from collaborating too closely (particularly sharing financial information) and I don't think Google should be any different). Was it ok for Google to associate the information entered in a Google profile to shut down his child's email? The problem with this system is that honest people are penalized and liars are not punished. Regardless of how this man handles the situation, that is not something I would like to face as a parent, to have my child punished for being honest and having to choose between social justice through lying (the child clearly has parent supervision and approval) and letting the child become embittered for losing a significant part of their digital identity (I'd recommend using offlineimap next time though).
• GFischer 15y ago
  The author made a followup post here: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013103.html#563511 http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013103.html#56... This is what it says: "Hey ho. Commenting here because I feel chased out of my own blog. I'm trying to figure out if I want to write a follow-up blog post, and if so, what I would write in it. More importantly, who would I be writing it for? There may be some catharsis for me in writing a response, but it would also involve me stewing in asshat soup for even longer while I composed it. The main thing I would want to clarify is that the technical problems are not actually the heart of the matter for me. Being responsible parents, we set Alex's email up in such a way that we get copies of all his incoming messages. We can probably reconstruct large chunks of his correspondence to date. I'm not even sure if Alex thinks of email as a long-term thing, though. He archives messages, but I don't know if he considers them anything other than ephemeral. Secondly, we can set him up with a new email account somewhere else. No problem. Offline, IMAP, webmail, whatever. That's easy. (Although I would very much prefer not to have to run my own email server, in the same way that I prefer not to fix the engine of my own car.) Alternatively, we can just do what everyone else does, and simply lie. It wouldn't be the first time, and it won't be the last. (#include relevant discussions of "legal" vs. "moral".) What really made me angry was the emotional harm. I don't like using that phrase, because for me it brings to mind stereotypical unreasonable lawsuits, but that's what it is. An authority figure in Alex's life turned round and damn near bit his hand off, when Alex thought he was following that figure's instructions. It feels like a violation of trust. No matter whether we get his old email back, the original violation remains. Hence the title of my post: Google made my son cry. When you hurt my kid, I get angry. I completely understand that Google's hands are tied because of COPPA. As soon as they knew that Alex was younger than 13, they had to act, and they can't "un-know" that information. My instinct says that this is an unintended consequence, though. I find it hard to imagine that "weeding out underage Gmail users" was listed as a goal on the G+ rollout plan. What would make me happy, as a parent (first of all) and as an interaction designer (because I find it hard to leave the professional side behind)? What would make this right? * If 13 is the hard age limit for using Gmail, Google should ask for your age when you sign up for a Gmail account. That way, you know in advance you're going to have to lie, rather than having the truth come up and bite you in the ass two years later. * Instead of the harsh, default TOS violation message, a sympathetic and apologetic error message tuned for the specific circumstance of discovering that you are too young to use the service. Think about it. In this specific case, what do you know about the user? You know that they're a child. Design for this. Error messages are bad enough for grown-ups; they're double-bad for kids. * The option to retrieve Alex's old email, instead of just discarding it. * The option for us to give parental consent for Alex to have a Gmail account. I love Gmail. I would much rather Alex had a Gmail account than that we have to arse about with Thunderbird and our own IMAP server. * Even if there is nothing they can do, an apology would be nice. Just because they're legally in the right, doesn't mean that they feel good about it. Show this."
• wakeup 15y ago
  I agree with google on this one this kid needs to get away from the computer!
• dev1n 15y ago
  if lulz security ever takes down another organization please let it be google. They need to learn that taking people's data is not something individuals will take lightly, nor should it be included in a bloody ToS. Nor should there be any reason why the boy's parents couldn't sign off on the contract as his legal guardians on the internet, as they are in real life. Google does not need to keep a 10 year old's email's to his grandparents because of a ToS breach. big impersonal corporations FTL.