Or so I think.
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.
Nej, that's just a sensationalist cliffhanger.
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.
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.
To where?
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.
[0] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/hey-google...
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?
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...
