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Wasn't it established that a bogus name would not make you lose access to gmail/docs/etc?
by tonfa 15y ago
Wasn't it established that a bogus name would not make you lose access to gmail/docs/etc?
- bad_user 15y agoWell, considering how some kids lost their Gmail account after signing up for Google+ and told the truth about their age, I wouldn't count on it.
- magicalist 15y agoThat's COPPA, though. You could argue that they should be supporting accounts for kids under 13 with parental permission (like Yahoo does, for instance), but that's not the same thing. Edit: and to preempt some class of responses: yes, as has been covered on HN before, COPPA has a clause that says not to warn users that setting their age to under 13 will prevent them from accessing content, and that you can't (generally) let them go back and change it later.
- bad_user 15y agoYeah, but why take away the access to Gmail? If Facebook/Twitter bans you, you don't lose access to Gmail. It makes no sense.
- true_religion 15y agoGoogle is a single company, and just finds it easier to ban you completely from their entire network than to let you have access in piecemeal to certain services.
- tomkarlo 15y agoA company can't ban a user from one service because they believe they're underage (to comply with COPA), then pretend to not know they should be banned from other services of the company where COPA would also apply. It's not "easier" to do that, it's just what you have to do since it's so difficult to make any social / messaging service COPA-compliant.
- true_religion 15y agoI inititially wrote just that but changed it.... I'm not sure that COPPA applies to GMail. Certainly, Yahoo mail doesn't stop me from entering a birth-date under the age of 13 when signing up for it.
- tomkarlo 15y agoYahoo will let you create the account, but then you'll have to go through a whole set of other steps to create a COPPA-compliant email account, including having a parent provide a credit card. That's different from how they would handle it if they had an existing account on Yahoo Mail and found out that the owner was less than 13 - I suspect they would have to turn it off as well, because they won't let you create a non-COPPA account once you've admitted you're under 13.
- magicalist 15y agoI don't understand. It is an argument for diversifying providers for email, social networking, etc, but, in this case, gmail/COPPA requires you to be over 13, so if google knows (or thinks it knows) a user is under 13, this does seem like the expected outcome. Am I missing your point?
- eru 15y agoAlso the kid in that discussion was from the Netherlands, where COPPA doesn't apply.
- abrahamsen 15y agoActually, COPPA is formulated in a way so that the nationality of the kid doesn't matter, only the nationality of the company.