Ask HN: Google disabled my daughter's email account | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Google disabled my daughter's email account

16 pointsmpreda10 comments

My daughter, born in 2008, has been using Gmail for the past couple of years with no issues. We created her email account together and I think I entered her correct birth date on account creation.

Today when she tried to access her email she was presented with the notice below and her account is disabled; the note says it will be deleted in 28days.

Reading on Google forums I understand that Google allows Gmail accounts for children under 13 years of age, on the condition of having enabled "parent supervision". Yet on my daughter's account it appears there is no way to set up "parent supervision" at this point because the account is disabled.

So in the situation where Google discovers that an under-age child has a Google account, instead of offering the option of setting up "supervision" on the account, Google disables the account pending deletion in 28 days. How does this make sense?

The "learn more" link in the text points to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1333913 and does not offer a way to set up "parent supervision".

Account disabled email.redacted@gmail.com It looks like you're not old enough to have a Google Account without parental supervision. Learn more If you entered the wrong birthday, update it now. Otherwise, your Google Account will be deleted in 28 days. If this Google Account is for a business or organisation, use the birth date of the owner or the person who manages the account. Your data is ready for download.

The account's data is ridiculously toxic (in a liability sense) and illegal to hold per COPPA probably.

Did you do this _IN ADVANCE_? Otherwise there's not much they can do...

> Existing methods to obtain verifiable parental consent that satisfy the requirements of this paragraph include:

> (i) Providing a consent form to be signed by the parent and returned to the operator by postal mail, facsimile, or electronic scan;

> (ii) Requiring a parent, in connection with a monetary transaction, to use a credit card, debit card, or other online payment system that provides notification of each discrete transaction to the primary account holder;

> (iii) Having a parent call a toll-free telephone number staffed by trained personnel;

> (iv) Having a parent connect to trained personnel via video-conference;

> (v) Verifying a parent's identity by checking a form of government-issued identification against databases of such information, where the parent's identification is deleted by the operator from its records promptly after such verification is complete; or

Twitter did a nearly identical thing to me when I signed up pre-13, complete account destruction for the same reason.

> If you entered the wrong birthday, update it now.

Can't you change it to your own birthday, set up parental supervision, then change it back?

That sounds like the best workaround here if that's indeed possible.

I've got to say, it doesn't surprise me much that Google sucks at this. They're hardly the only ones, though. My son plays games on Steam, and I put his account in Family Mode or something like that. It disables a bunch of stuff, but it disables a bit too much. He sees that he has notifications, but the only way to access them is to turn off this family mode.

You need to change the age of the account. There is no way AFAIK to convert a regular account to a kid account.

What a great lesson at such a young age.

The lesson is that everyone on the internet is at least 18 years old.

Castles made of Sand

So, wait, how did Google suddenly find out she was underage?

someone probably got around to writing / running a script that checked the ages.

There has been an uptick in Google taking more seriously the various laws about collecting, maintaining, and selling data from minors. Lots of effects with YouTube and advertising and here apparently mail as well.

Likely they already knew but are now doing the proper self regulation in fear of or under threat of regulatory action.

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