8 ms·

Path reaches settlement with FTC, agrees to pay $800K fine for COPPA violations

34 points by devinfoley 14y ago

rikacomet 14y ago
I know this might have a obvious answer, but I need to be clear: Which of the following is the case here? 1. Minors below 13 were able to sign-up under the guidance of adults but the system was not having enough checks in place? 2. Minors could register as minors without any system at all?
- devinfoley 14y ago
  Apparently #2: "As you may know, we ask users’ their birthdays during the process of creating an account. However, there was a period of time where our system was not automatically rejecting people who indicated that they were under 13."
  - dusing 14y ago
    So there is a law against allowing 13yr olds on a social network?
    - Timothee 14y ago
      Pretty much: it's COPPA. The gist of COPPA is that you can't collect information about people under 13, without the express consent from a parent. So it's not completely against the law to have 13yo on a social network, it's just common for sites to just refuse kids altogether, mostly out of convenience. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protec... and http://www.coppa.org/ http://www.coppa.org/.
      - guard-of-terra 14y ago
        And therefore every kid out there learns that 1) adults are stupid and coward and, 2) you should lie to them all the time, before reaching the age of 13. We are all miserable idiots for allowing this.
        stickfigure 14y ago
        This is exactly what happens. I know several 10- and 11- year olds (my gf's sister is 23 years younger) and they all lie about their age to use Facebook and Google - with the knowledge and consent of their parents/guardians. This is incredibly stupid.
        guard-of-terra 14y ago
        I'm extremely intrigued by this question: What mentality would these children acquire? Will it be "play the game" or "fuck the system"? Will they lie, make other people lie, make everyone act as if they're honest; or would they break this grandiose lie into a million thawing bits?
        ja27 14y ago
        Mostly "this is stupid and I'm going to sign up anyways". My daughter created her own fake Facebook accounts twice before she was 10 and has had one we allowed since she was 11. She original did it to play Farmville and the other Facebook games all her friends were playing. She also got her GMail account locked out after Google+ launched when she innocently entered her actual date-of-birth when they prompted for it one day. This is the email account that all of her teachers expect her to have - just like all of her fellow students have. I'm all for protecting kids' privacy, but there should be a parental override available to allow under-13 users onto services.
        guard-of-terra 14y ago
        What stance would they take once they're grown up?
        14y ago
      - kmano8 14y ago
        I just realized all the common message board/forum platforms seem to have that checkbox built in. Never realized why that was the age cutoff.
mvkel 14y ago
Does this mean if you don't ask for a birthdate on your service, you're safe, or are you required to ask for birthdate and reject anything that comes in under 13? An easy fix for this: dynamically populate the date drop-downs so you can only select (today - 13 years)
- lm741 14y ago
  You don't have to ask for a user's age if your site is intended for a "general audience". You'll still need to purge information from users who are discovered to be under 13. See questions 40/41 http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm#teen http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm#teen """ 40. I operate a general audience site and do not ask visitors to reveal their ages. I do have a button that users can click to send feedback, comments, or questions by email. What are my responsibilities if I get an email that says, “Hi, I am Steve, age 10, and I really like your site. When do you think you will add some more games?” Under the Rule’s one-time contact exception, 16 C.F.R. § 312.5(c)(2), you may reply to the child once without sending notice to the parent or obtaining parental consent, if you do not re-contact the child, and you delete the child’s personal information, including email address, from your records after responding to the email. """ Legal Corollary of 40: If you send spoofed email to a site operator claiming to be under 13, you could legally force them to delete another user's account.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
What "Children protection" means really is "we want to shelve children in a dark dry place until they reach age". The problem with that kind of thinking is that it will yield toddlers of age. Able-bodied but socially infantile. The solution to that problem is that those rules are largely ignored by everyone. But this creates the dangerous law relativity where you have these laws but know they're never applied to you. And when they suddently are applied you are in a deep trouble. Stupid people -> Stupid laws -> Stupid society.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  (The REAL problem, of course, is the suffering of children being shelved, but who really cares what children feel? Not many.)
- jonknee 14y ago
  Yikes. Making it legal to prey on children online is not a great solution.
  - guard-of-terra 14y ago
    Making things you can't control illegal is not a solution at all.
  - stickfigure 14y ago
    Think of the children! This is old and tired, especially when you throw in emotionally charged phrases like "prey on". Does Facebook prey on its users? Around a billion people don't think so.
    - jonknee 14y ago
      Facebook does not allow pre-teens on their site precisely because of this law. I do not think that's a bad thing. The law is not perfect, but it is intended to be a tool to stop people from exploiting kids 12 and under. The exploitation isn't necessarily from the site operator, but other users. If Facebook had a bunch of 11 year olds (and now with Graph Search it would be easy to find 11 year olds near you) the main concern would not be that Facebook would somehow take advantage, but that other people on Facebook would. These same kids cannot go to a PG-13 rated movie without an adult either, I don't find this especially onerous. http://www.facebook.com/help/441374602560317/ http://www.facebook.com/help/441374602560317/
peterhajas 14y ago
COPPA doesn't seem that unreasonable. Protecting children from information disclosure while they're under the age of 13 seems very appropriate to me. Once kids are 13, they can begin to disclose at their own discretion, but before that, I can see the case for protecting them.
- stickfigure 14y ago
  Of course COPPA doesn't seem unreasonable, and that's why it continues to exist. However, it is a lesson in unintended consequences: Rather than protecting children, COPPA has the effect of banning them from the internet. The subsequent effect of teaching children to lie and exploit the system is just icing on the proverbial cake. Laws must not be judged on their intentions, but on their practical consequences. The only difference between the current world and a world without COPPA is that in this world, honest kids are prevented from having the same fun that their lying friends are having.
  - jonknee 14y ago
    They aren't banned from the internet. They're banned from disclosing personal information (e.g. social networking) without parental consent, which at their age is probably not a bad thing. Wikipedia, Google and the rest of the internet are all fair game. So is any site that goes through with the parental consent part. Sites that do not tailor to kids typically do not go through the hassle because under-13 also means they aren't going to spend any money.
    - stickfigure 14y ago
      The practical result is that kids are banned from nearly any site that could conceivably discover their age - presumably even by commenting in a forum or on a blog entry. Actually, nix that. The practical result is that kids are taught to lie about their age. Fortunately this skill will come in handy when it's time to get a fake ID and buy booze.
      - deleted_account 14y ago
Friedduck 14y ago
The sad thing is I think Path responded far better than most others, and they've received a heavy-handed response relative to the abuses of so many others. They were transparent, admitted their mistake, and corrected it. What's the lesson here? Bury your mistakes and avoid the PR headache and financial penalties?
- deleted_account 14y ago
  The investigation was launched due to Path uploading people's entire address book to their servers with out the user's permission. I have little sympathy that such a casual disregard to customer's privacy would come to bite them in the ass multiple times.

34 points by devinfoley 14y ago

I know this might have a obvious answer, but I need to be clear: Which of the following is the case here? 1. Minors below 13 were able to sign-up under the guidance of adults but the system was not having enough checks in place? 2. Minors could register as minors without any system at all?

devinfoley 14y ago
Apparently #2: "As you may know, we ask users’ their birthdays during the process of creating an account. However, there was a period of time where our system was not automatically rejecting people who indicated that they were under 13."
- dusing 14y ago
  So there is a law against allowing 13yr olds on a social network?
  - Timothee 14y ago
    Pretty much: it's COPPA. The gist of COPPA is that you can't collect information about people under 13, without the express consent from a parent. So it's not completely against the law to have 13yo on a social network, it's just common for sites to just refuse kids altogether, mostly out of convenience. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protec... and http://www.coppa.org/ http://www.coppa.org/.
    - guard-of-terra 14y ago
      And therefore every kid out there learns that 1) adults are stupid and coward and, 2) you should lie to them all the time, before reaching the age of 13. We are all miserable idiots for allowing this.
      - stickfigure 14y ago
        This is exactly what happens. I know several 10- and 11- year olds (my gf's sister is 23 years younger) and they all lie about their age to use Facebook and Google - with the knowledge and consent of their parents/guardians. This is incredibly stupid.
        guard-of-terra 14y ago
        I'm extremely intrigued by this question: What mentality would these children acquire? Will it be "play the game" or "fuck the system"? Will they lie, make other people lie, make everyone act as if they're honest; or would they break this grandiose lie into a million thawing bits?
        ja27 14y ago
        Mostly "this is stupid and I'm going to sign up anyways". My daughter created her own fake Facebook accounts twice before she was 10 and has had one we allowed since she was 11. She original did it to play Farmville and the other Facebook games all her friends were playing. She also got her GMail account locked out after Google+ launched when she innocently entered her actual date-of-birth when they prompted for it one day. This is the email account that all of her teachers expect her to have - just like all of her fellow students have. I'm all for protecting kids' privacy, but there should be a parental override available to allow under-13 users onto services.
        guard-of-terra 14y ago
        What stance would they take once they're grown up?
        14y ago
    - kmano8 14y ago
      I just realized all the common message board/forum platforms seem to have that checkbox built in. Never realized why that was the age cutoff.

mvkel 14y ago

Does this mean if you don't ask for a birthdate on your service, you're safe, or are you required to ask for birthdate and reject anything that comes in under 13? An easy fix for this: dynamically populate the date drop-downs so you can only select (today - 13 years)

lm741 14y ago
You don't have to ask for a user's age if your site is intended for a "general audience". You'll still need to purge information from users who are discovered to be under 13. See questions 40/41 http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm#teen http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm#teen """ 40. I operate a general audience site and do not ask visitors to reveal their ages. I do have a button that users can click to send feedback, comments, or questions by email. What are my responsibilities if I get an email that says, “Hi, I am Steve, age 10, and I really like your site. When do you think you will add some more games?” Under the Rule’s one-time contact exception, 16 C.F.R. § 312.5(c)(2), you may reply to the child once without sending notice to the parent or obtaining parental consent, if you do not re-contact the child, and you delete the child’s personal information, including email address, from your records after responding to the email. """ Legal Corollary of 40: If you send spoofed email to a site operator claiming to be under 13, you could legally force them to delete another user's account.

guard-of-terra 14y ago

What "Children protection" means really is "we want to shelve children in a dark dry place until they reach age". The problem with that kind of thinking is that it will yield toddlers of age. Able-bodied but socially infantile. The solution to that problem is that those rules are largely ignored by everyone. But this creates the dangerous law relativity where you have these laws but know they're never applied to you. And when they suddently are applied you are in a deep trouble. Stupid people -> Stupid laws -> Stupid society.

guard-of-terra 14y ago
(The REAL problem, of course, is the suffering of children being shelved, but who really cares what children feel? Not many.)
jonknee 14y ago
Yikes. Making it legal to prey on children online is not a great solution.
- guard-of-terra 14y ago
  Making things you can't control illegal is not a solution at all.
- stickfigure 14y ago
  Think of the children! This is old and tired, especially when you throw in emotionally charged phrases like "prey on". Does Facebook prey on its users? Around a billion people don't think so.
  - jonknee 14y ago
    Facebook does not allow pre-teens on their site precisely because of this law. I do not think that's a bad thing. The law is not perfect, but it is intended to be a tool to stop people from exploiting kids 12 and under. The exploitation isn't necessarily from the site operator, but other users. If Facebook had a bunch of 11 year olds (and now with Graph Search it would be easy to find 11 year olds near you) the main concern would not be that Facebook would somehow take advantage, but that other people on Facebook would. These same kids cannot go to a PG-13 rated movie without an adult either, I don't find this especially onerous. http://www.facebook.com/help/441374602560317/ http://www.facebook.com/help/441374602560317/

peterhajas 14y ago

COPPA doesn't seem that unreasonable. Protecting children from information disclosure while they're under the age of 13 seems very appropriate to me. Once kids are 13, they can begin to disclose at their own discretion, but before that, I can see the case for protecting them.

stickfigure 14y ago
Of course COPPA doesn't seem unreasonable, and that's why it continues to exist. However, it is a lesson in unintended consequences: Rather than protecting children, COPPA has the effect of banning them from the internet. The subsequent effect of teaching children to lie and exploit the system is just icing on the proverbial cake. Laws must not be judged on their intentions, but on their practical consequences. The only difference between the current world and a world without COPPA is that in this world, honest kids are prevented from having the same fun that their lying friends are having.
- jonknee 14y ago
  They aren't banned from the internet. They're banned from disclosing personal information (e.g. social networking) without parental consent, which at their age is probably not a bad thing. Wikipedia, Google and the rest of the internet are all fair game. So is any site that goes through with the parental consent part. Sites that do not tailor to kids typically do not go through the hassle because under-13 also means they aren't going to spend any money.
  - stickfigure 14y ago
    The practical result is that kids are banned from nearly any site that could conceivably discover their age - presumably even by commenting in a forum or on a blog entry. Actually, nix that. The practical result is that kids are taught to lie about their age. Fortunately this skill will come in handy when it's time to get a fake ID and buy booze.
    - deleted_account 14y ago

Friedduck 14y ago

The sad thing is I think Path responded far better than most others, and they've received a heavy-handed response relative to the abuses of so many others. They were transparent, admitted their mistake, and corrected it. What's the lesson here? Bury your mistakes and avoid the PR headache and financial penalties?

deleted_account 14y ago
The investigation was launched due to Path uploading people's entire address book to their servers with out the user's permission. I have little sympathy that such a casual disregard to customer's privacy would come to bite them in the ass multiple times.