Google Made My Daughter Cry Today | Hacker News Reader

Google Made My Daughter Cry Today

matthovey.wordpress.com

43 pointsweirdkid34 comments

> "I’m very, very close to moving all my family’s email accounts off Google."

Says the guy who registered a Gmail address for his children when they were born and buys a _Chromebook_ for them, since it's great and everything is in the cloud.

What can I say.

Exactly. I was a fan; now... not as much.

I can understand that he is pissed off..but that much?

Nej, that's just a sensationalist cliffhanger.

The CR-48 chromebooks weren't for sale; Google gave them away.

Very Bad: you@your-isp.com

Bad: you@platform-provider.com (gmail)

Good: you@your-lastname.me (or your-lastname.com)

your-lastname.me or your-lastname.com - is the domain you own.

Once you own your own domain and mailbox - just use platform providers (or ISP) for what they are useful for - as a temporary convenience tools. Always maintain backups of your mailboxes under your control.

If ISP or platform-provider will misbehave - scrap them for then better offering.

The problem with that is that it's unsustainable. How many ie. Ben Adams would this work with, ben@adams.me? 1. Now Ben Adams owns `adams.me` and has no incentive or mechanism to offer his domain to the million other people with his last name.

His point is more "own the domain you use for email" and less "first@last.me," I think.

Reminds me of a story that made the rounds in 2011 [0]. The title is almost the same ("Google made my daughter cry" vs "Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.").

[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/hey-google...

The number of people saying "It's the law" as if that has any intrinsic meaning is a little astonishing.

Also, from COPPA: While children under 13 can legally give out personal information with their parents' permission, many websites altogether disallow underage children from using their services due to the amount of work involved.

So it's not merely a governmental problem. It's a problem with how much work companies are willing to put in to let children access their services.

It suits Hacker News to believe that the government is causing Google to disable accounts, even though that is not true.

It isn't a belief. Even if Google obtained parental consent by law it still can't market to children-- since Google's services are a giant marketing engine, it is reasonable for them to disable children's accounts.

COPPA makes compliance tricky, that is why Google (and others) try to avoid it altogether.

There's still no wide agreement on how to properly implement the ‘paternal permission’ provision, and what sort of data would be allowed to be collected, as even the sort of data that is required to run the service such as processing inbound and outbound messages to identify and filter spam for example can get you into a gray area.

Although I personally oppose it and find it asinine, I'm pretty sure COPPA is federal law.

"I’m very, very close to moving all my family’s email accounts off Google."

To where?

i'm sure that this guy whiningly (not a word, but you get what I mean) continuing to use gmail... will really show google

Tangential, I know, but sure it's a word:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whiningly

It is a word. Whingingly is a word too.

We had this same experience with my daughter around the same age. This is also an issue with Android devices that desire (require?) a Google login when setting them up.

If you need to have a Google account to use a Chromebook, and the under-13 crowd can't have one, then why do they market Chromebooks to kids and families? I shouldn't sign into it for her, since then she would have unfettered access to the net (including my email, Google Wallet, etc.) as ME, right?

All online birthdays are 00:00 Jan 1, 1970. Maybe not for a 9-year-old, admittedly, but start of epoch is easy for techies to remember. I have yet to see a birthdate form on the web that would actually be served differently between this and my actual birthdate.

This got me thinking, as I have many primary-school clients ("K-6" schools) making extensive use of Google Apps for Education to give the students access to various services like gmail, drive, sites, blogger.

So I just did a search, and found the following question and answer on productforums.google.com[1] from 2009...

Question:

We currently have Google Apps Education in our school. Our teachers in the elementary and middle school have expressed a great interest in using Google Docs in the classroom. I read on the web that there is a age restriction of 13. Is there anything in the terms of service that indicates this and what is Google's position on using Google docs in k-5 classrooms.

Answer:

If you are using Google Docs within Google Apps Education Edition for your school domain, your school assumes the responsibility for complying with COPPA and the information that students submit. When offering online services to children under 13, schools must be cognizant of Child Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA is a regulation that requires parental consent for the online collection of information about users under 13. Per the Google Apps Education Edition Agreement, any school administering Google Apps Education Edition acknowledges and agrees that it is solely responsible for compliance with COPPA, including, but not limited to, obtaining parental consent concerning collection of students' personal information used in connection with the provisioning and use of the Services by the Customer and End Users.

Parental consent and notification could take place in form of a permission slip granting use of Google Apps and/or other technology services at the school. For more information on complying with COPPA see the FTC's website at www.ftc.gov/coppa.

EDIT:

From [2], google have also said:

Asking for age information helps us provide features like age-appropriate settings to our users, who are interacting more every day with the people they know. Under our policies, Google doesn’t allow users who are under the age of 13 to have Google Accounts, unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school. This is similar to a lot of online services, as it's very complicated for many providers to offer better solutions for children that meet the relevant regulations.

[1] http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-educati...

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/hey-google...

It's the law:

http://www.coppa.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Online_Privacy_Prote...

Given that, maybe Google should force users under the age of 13 to fill out an online form that has the parent's consent on it. Although, this might not stop some to forge information on it, at least, Google can remain in compliance under the law this way.

Or so I think.

The law states that a site may collect information with the consent of the child's parents. That is fairly innocuous. The problem is that Google scuttles the account and thus the Chromebook.

The law goes a lot further than that, the law prevents Google from marketing to children, so it would have to disable ALL of its marketing and tracking programs for children's accounts. It is reasonable for Google to scuttle the account instead, these services are not intended for children.

Unless Google is trying to build a business that these children will come to rely on once they get older.

At Google's scale, I think it definitely makes sense to put the extra engineering effort in to comply with the law while the kid is too young.

On the other hand, I'd probably sign up as a 5 year old if it meant Google would collect less information from me and show fewer ads. Paid account?

Indeed. This problem is caused by the U.S. Government, not Google.

So more accurately: A US Federal Law Made My Daughter Cry

That's not correct. More likely, they were too lazy to be COPA compliant.

COPPA compliance includes no marketing to children, even with parental consent. So they'd have to operate a completely different platform for children. Plus their business model is based on marketing, so they'd take a huge loss operating a second platform for kids. It is stupid to expect Google to accommodate children.

It's not really a second platform, is it? It's more like adding a single configuration bit to an account that determines whether it is eligible for marketing campaigns (or whatever else it is they can't do with children).

It's even likely that they already have such a thing in place for debugging purposes.

I'm intrigued by this system you suggest that manages to get an entire engine for obtaining 'verifiable parental consent' squished into a single configuration bit, along with an engine to directly notify parents, to allow parents to view all the collected data, and provide deletion from backups. That's one busy bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pro...

Which part of the law do you think requires Google to do this?

(Hint: the answer is there is no such part.)

The part that makes it onerous for Google to do it. Laws don't have to explicitly forbid activity to shape it.

Eyeroll.

Kids cry and cops eat donuts. So ?

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