Path reaches settlement with FTC, agrees to pay $800K fine for COPPA violations
gigaom.com
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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.
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.
These same kids cannot go to a PG-13 rated movie without an adult either, I don't find this especially onerous.
Also, the MPAA rating system is not a legal requirement. AFAIK, there is no law which prevents 13 year olds from watching PG-13 movies, either in theaters or at home: http://www.theclyde.net/TheClyde_Ratings.htm
Seriously, go read it (http://www.coppa.org/coppa.htm). You're getting your jimmies rustled under the pretense that COPPA has anything to do with protecting children from the "evils" of the Internet.
But here's the distinction: the "protection of privacy" is not a subset of the "protection of children."
You're throwing COPPA into the same bucket as every other misguided attempt to shelter children from the boogeymen of the Internet. That's not its intent; you're misinterpreting it.
By its results. And the results are not pretty: we are now growing a generation of liars who learned to lie by default, as a pre-requisite to everything.
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.
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.
Honestly, I would think this crowd would be more disappointed that "banned from nearly any site" has become synonymous with "unwilling to submit all your personally identifiable information."
You being unwilling to submit personal information also makes you banned from almost all the web, including e-mail services.
Because you make it sound like that.
UPD: Let me show you an example: Pretend we're talking about some law and you're arguing it's not designed to protect me, but to protect my body. My first thought: the hell are you going to do with my body? Because, my body is what makes me me. If you protect it but not me perhaps you're going to sell my organs away.
By your analogy, COPPA would be the law that prevents people from collecting and selling children's organs. Because kids are gullible and and it's easy to convince them out of a kidney or two.
Except replace "organs" with "personally identifiable information companies want in order to market shit to you."
Tragic.
You managed to think yourself into a corner where a law protecting personal privacy from corporate misuse is an attack against your freedom.
I'm leaving now; don't follow me.
BTW, your website is likely already collecting personal information, including name, email address, and web pages visited. And yes, as soon as you subsequently find out that someone is under 13, you're in trouble.
An easy fix for this: dynamically populate the date drop-downs so you can only select (today - 13 years)
See questions 40/41 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.
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?
I have little sympathy that such a casual disregard to customer's privacy would come to bite them in the ass multiple times.
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?
"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."
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_Protec... and http://www.coppa.org/.
We are all miserable idiots for allowing this.
This is incredibly stupid.
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?
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.
Not coincidently that's all COPPA requires. You can run web services tailored to the under-13 set, you just need to collect parental approval for your young users. Facebook and Google don't bother with it because it's a hassle.
Again, the actual effect of the law is not what's written in it. The actual effect is that internet companies (like my startup) simply ban the under-13 set. And we just register people for bicycle races!