7 ms·
To be honest, I think a large part of the blame goes to COPPA. I remember listening on those hearings, and those opposed to COPPA warned against this exact thin
by quanticle 15y ago
To be honest, I think a large part of the blame goes to COPPA. I remember listening on those hearings, and those opposed to COPPA warned against this exact thing happening. They said that taking the decision away from parents would lead to disaster, and guess what, it has.
Rather than blaming Google here, shouldn't we be writing our legislators to repeal COPPA? We should be telling them that this misguided law is starting to intrude onto the choices that parents make when raising their children, and that it should be repealed immediately. As long as COPPA exists, we'll see more and more stories like this.
- 1010011010 15y agoCOPPA is fucking stupid legislation, but Google should at least provide a "parental consent" mechanism.
- dotBen 15y agoA parent can't 'over-rule' a federal law. "Hey Mr Food-N-Liquor owner, I give you consent for you to sell my 18 year old alcohol" etc
- freiheit 15y agoExcept, of course, that COPPA has a parental consent provision. The problem is the burden of verifiability.
- CamperBob 15y agoWhich other services like Yahoo seem to have no problem with.
- Vivtek 15y agoCOPPA explicitly provides for a parental consent mechanism; Google simply doesn't choose to implement it. Everybody else implements it just fine.
- rmrm 15y agoHad never tried, so I just tried to create an underage account at Yahoo, they handle it thusly: Please get your mom or dad! You need your parent or guardian's permission to continue. Show them this screen. Parents, Please Sign-In. To complete your child's Yahoo! registration: Sign in with your own Yahoo! ID or sign up for a new account by clicking on the "Create New Account" button below. Confirm your child's information on the next page. You will need a major credit card. To create a Yahoo! ID for your child, we require your consent to collect, use and disclose certain personal information about him or her. You can give this consent by signing in to Yahoo!, reviewing and editing the information your child provided, and then submitting the form on your child's behalf. You will be charged 50 cents to help confirm that a parent or guardian more than 18 years old is involved. Yahoo! will donate a portion of that charge to charity. Your child will be able to use most of Yahoo!'s unmoderated services, including Messenger, Mail, Groups and Message Boards. Learn how to make smart and safer choices online and get advice on using Yahoo! products safely.
- quanticle 15y agoEveryone else? Hardly. Facebook doesn't implement it. Twitter doesn't implement it. MSN doesn't. Pretty much all forums out there require you to "verify" that you're older than 13 to post. Google is hardly the only site to judge the consent mechanism exception to be too burdensome and unprofitable to implement.
- Elepsis 15y ago
- lps24 15y agoActually, in many states parents CAN give consent for their children to have alcohol. For example, section 4301.69 of the Ohio Revised Code states "Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, no person shall sell beer or intoxicating liquor to an underage person...unless the underage person is supervised by a parent, ..." (Quote abbreviated for brevity, but the elided portion doesn't change the meaning)
- darklajid 15y agoWhich is kind of ironic, given that 18 seems to be the world-wide consensus for being of legal age [1] and drinking age [2]. But your point stands, of course: No overruling of that fact by a parent or - god forbid - the 18 year old that should be protected. No attack against you or your values (if you even share those represented by the laws), but - yeah - I wanted to rub in the fact that this is kind of anti-liberal. And - maybe the basis that supports laws like that is to blame for COPPA as well? 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_age#Countries_and_subdivisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_age#Countries_and_subdiv... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_age
- wicknicks 15y agoCOPPA seems ridiculous and naive. Its harder for a kid to access GMail/Facebook than a porn site! I don't think Google is not to blame here. They should have sent a warning to the daughter's email address atleast. Tomorrow all someone needs to kill my account is to crack into it, and change my date or birth -- and let Google do the rest.
- DuncanIdaho 15y agoIt really feels like stone age. There are 13 year old kids out there who can write a web and mail server, yet could get into trouble for using them.
- pjscott 15y agoIn a way, this is a useful life lesson: sometimes the most reasonable thing to do is to lie to unreasonable institutions.
- einhverfr 15y agoAnd thereby commit a misdemeanor under some interpretations of the CFAA.
- pjscott 15y agoWhat are the odds of suffering any negative repercussions? Especially for a minor?
- einhverfr 15y agoNone, as long as you don't piss off a prosecutor somewhere who wants to punish you for being a bad person. The problem here is it makes it possible for someone to say "show me the man and I'll find you the crime." Not a good position to be in, honestly....