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ICQ Banishes Children Under 13
BubbaFett writes: "I received a GnomeICU message this morning from UIN #1 stating:
'To address a U.S. law aimed at protecting children's privacy, we cannot permit children under age 13 to use the ICQ service. Your profile presently shows your age as under 13. Therefore, we will close your account within 48 hours. If you are under 13, you may open an account only after your 13th birthday. We regret any inconvenience.' ICQ's privacy policy stating the same thing is here. I guess I should go change my age in the profile."
Update: 07/01 17:33 PM by michael : Several readers are confusing COPA, the Child Online Protection Act, which was an internet censorship law passed after the Communications Decency Act was struck down, and has itself been ruled unconstitutional, with the similarly-acronymed COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which regulates what websites can do to invade the privacy of children under 13, and which has not been struck down nor even challenged.
While this of course will not stop 12 year olds from using ICQ, it will prevent profiles from saying that users are 12 years old. This will in a way increase the privacy of children under 13, as it will prevent them involuntarily giving their age out online.
15 year olds are not limited to spending around $20. I am 15 and in the last 6 months probably spent 20 times that amount over the internet. Whats more, this is money I have earnt, not from my parents (who for the record are not anything close to rich). I know lots of people with jobs and with no monetary obligations it is all largely disposable income.
And why not? A large majority of under 16s are vastly more technologically aware than a large percentage of the population. I'm sure you'd love to know I advise several companies on their IT systems and...ISPs. You can't put a cut off age limit on knowledge, especially with something like the internet and computers.Per their terms of service, Yahoo! doesn't allow users under 18 to post personal ads. However, a lot of the non-porn ads state that the woman's age is 18 in the header, and then the first sentence of the body is "hi im actually 16/f but they wouldn't let me put 16."
Yeah, but if you contact one of those "16 year olds" she'll look/sound like a 25-45 and want your credit card number before talking to or visiting you.
If "she" dosn't want money i'd assume she's a federal agent.
- bridgette
Actually, it's basic human WRONG.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Yes, but you are then asking for Parents to actualy raise there own kids, or for the childeren to use common sense in their pursuit of cybersex. Either way, you are asking alot, at least from the average American. Why else would we "need" such a law? (that's either of them)
Also realize that the average person doesn't think about how much information that they give out in a random conversation, not their real name or address, but often enough to find one or the other. People are just to trusting on the internet because they Think they are untracable, safe from the outside world. We all know how true that is.
What should be done then? Well, why on Mother Earth does ICQ list your IP number? How about some guidelines for newbies on what might not be good to put in your profile? How about actualy increasing the security of the network to help secure the privacy of the user?
No, too much work. Law says we only have to protect the kids, so, we'll just deal with them.
Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...
I'm also willing to bet there are a LOT of people out there OVER 18 who don't have credit cards. I know 2 people, and I don't KNOW that many people, ones in his early 40's, the other is in his 50's, neither have credit cards. One is down to the fact that until recently he was homeless, the other has always paid cash for stuff. This whole credit card verification thing is such a STUPID and incredibly inaccurate method of verifiying age.
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http://www.icq.com/legal/usenote.html
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seumas.com
But a child of say, 13 through 17 can?
No.
The protected classes are limited to those explicitly listed in the law by Congress. There may be state or local laws that cover more areas, such as sexual preference. In some areas, such as hiring or lending money, a practice can be prohibited if it has a "disparate impact" on a protected class.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
netstat -a
This leads to one of two scenarios:
1) You're chatting with the avearge user on ICQ. They won't know if netstat, so if your IP is hidden, they'll never know it (not from ICQ, anyway), and if it's not hidden, they'll have no idea what to do with it.
2) You're chatting with does know about netstat, which means that whether you tell ICQ to hide your IP or not, they can find out what it is.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Actually, no. There are no UINs below 1001, aside from the almost-theoretical UIN 1. Mirabilis staff uins have 5 digits, usually ending in 4 zeroes.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
This has absolutely no impact. Every child below 13 will create a new account stating he's at least 25. There is no way to validate that, so although AOL seems to have taken a step to please the DOJ, it will not stop young childs from using ICQ.
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If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
A distributed approach is not a bad idea. However, as Gnutella, it would produce huge amounts of traffic. Gnutella needs about 1 KB per connection with another node per second, so it's not exactly suited for your average modem user. And that just for instant messaging, would be overkill. Maybe the traffic could be reduced.
Any new instant messaging system that is not pushed by a major corporation will probably have a hard time being established. OTOH, it would give the opportunity to create a clean protocol from scratch, different from the crappy one ICQ uses (even the developers say so, IIRC, they never thought it would become that huge). With built-in cryptography for privacy, authentication techniques to reduce spam, a good free C library implementing it to have it on all platforms and other goodies.
Yes, it was. What does that have to do with COPPA, the law we're concerned with here?
Yes, they would. American companies, due to COPPA, are not allowed to gather information from children under 13. Not just Americans under thirteen... anyone under 13.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
June 7th! More than three weeks ago!
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seumas.com
I don't use ICQ very often, but when I did it was extremely useful to me. I started using ICQ back in 1997 when I was doing some work for a client over the 'net. It made sense, as at the time it was near real-time and private. After I have finished the job, I continued to use it as it seemed a good way of keeping in touch with people.
Then, suddenly, about 2 months ago, I recieved an e-mail from mirabilis or ICQ or whatever they call themselves now, informing me that as my user details listed me as being under 13, I would have my account deleted within 28 days if I did not change it, or within 2 days or my next log on to the ICQ network. Sure enough, the next time I logged on, I was messaged with a very simialr message. Being a linux user as I was, there was no way to change these details in the user directory using the client I was using, and I couldn't find anything obvious on the web site, so having no other option, I left it.
And so my account was deleted soon after. I haven't opened another one, partly because of all the hassles of telling everyone my new number, and partly because I don't agree with a company forcing the laws of one country on to a citizen of another (I live in the UK). Nowadays, anyone who wants to contact me is referred to a BBS I frequent, and told to find me there. Unfortunate, but that's the way it is.
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Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last... This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
Then maybe kids should be given the vote.
-- iCEBaLM
The protocol and server just hit 1.0; this is a real, working system. Good clients are available for X11 and Win32, and are in progress on other platforms.
Jabber is interoperable with AIM, ICQ, and (soon, at least) IRC and e-mail. Interoperability is server-side, so that clients don't need any changes to support new protocols.
I've been using ICQ (Windows) for about 8 months, and it has had the same policy all the time. "Anyone under 13 cannot have an account. If you're found to be 13, you'll be terminated..." It may be new to the various GNU/Linux ports, but It's VERY old news for ICQ users in general.
-----------------------------------------
Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
Further more, yes there are (at least, there WERE) ICQ numbers beneath 1,000. They were reserved for a number of friends of the software originators and the staff when it was wholly owned by Mirabilis. I'm not sure whether these still exist, but I imagine they do.
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seumas.com
Jabber is a great idea and I hope it becomes a success, but I think that a larger 'distributed' model is called for -- or will be, eventually. With the current model for 'distributed' networks, a reliable system probably is not wholly feasible, but there must be a way with some modifications to make such a system, altered from the current Gnutella-like service.
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seumas.com
> address, etc) of anyone underage. All ICQ has to do to remove itself from any concern is take the age category out of
> their demographic marketing information gathering registration section. Suddenly, they'll no longer knowingly be
> tracking anything from a child under 13.
So all we have to do is bribe^H^H^H^H^Hlobby enough scumb^H^H^H^H^Hrepresentatives to s/13/999/g in the law, and at least America will be rid of Doublefuck and the rest of their ilk for once and for all :-)
bullshit
i am 16 and i can damn well understand the consequences of my actions better then a lot of the adults i know. I am complaining, because the gov't has no right to take away my rights without my say. i am knowledgable enough to decide for myself what is right and wrong.
if minors can be charged as adults in court after they committ crimes, then they should be considered adults all the time. you cant have it both ways.
i understand you'll have to take my word for it, but i cant believe they let some of the idiots (adults) in the USA (where I live) vote and I cant. Im sorry, but there is no reason for that.
You can vote even if you have no idea about what the voting process is or what it does or even who you are voting for, if you are over 18. I understand all those things, better then a lot of adults most probably, and I cant vote.
Someone please explain why.
To address a U.S. law aimed at protecting idiots' privacy, we cannot permit people with an IQ under 70 to use the internet. Your profile presently shows you are an idiot (Remember that post you made saying "Me Too"? What the hell were you thinking?). Therefore, we will close your account within 48 hours. If you are an idiot, you may open an account only after you stop being an idiot (i.e. never). We regret any inconvenience
That will take care of the entire AOL userbase.
Mmmm.. Donuts
ICQ User #1 is in fact the admin of ICQ ... it's the user number that gives system messages
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
for those interested, icq UIN #1 is the "System" account, i.e. the windows icq client treats messages from this UIN as special messages, coming not from an user but from the mirabilis team.
I will not buy this software, it is scratched
Um...probably because I was still dazed from the concert the night before. Heh.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Unfortunately, COPA makes complying with it extremely expensive, and the risk of a lawsuit is just too high. I run a small web site and have also been forced to post "please don't use this service if you're under 13" on certain places that collect personal information, such as discussion group forums which collect e-mail ID, etc. for verfication purposes.
Instead of killing people's UINs, they should've just done the other half of the job for themselves too -- "Hi. We noticed that your age and/or birthday as stated in your profile indicates that you're under the age of 13. Since you agreed to our user policy when you signed up, you must be over the age of 13 and thus lying on your profile. Your age has been reset to 13, and the birthday adjusted accordingly. Please do not lie in your profile in the future."
// zyqqh
This seems strange, however, as the 'victims' of any privacy invasion would not be located within the jurisdiction of the United States and, in fact, wouldn't even be an American citizen, which means that the government here has no obligation nor any right to enforce legal 'protection' upon citizens of other countries.
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seumas.com
You're right. But I think alienating the 13-17 crowd would kill ICQ's bread and butter. Most of their users are high school kids, as far as I can tell... which makes me wonder about why I always get spammed with porn when I make the mistake of loading up that thing.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
The ICQ program is not a website. And the icq.com website itself doesn't require any personal information. I don't see how COPPA is any more related, then, than COPA.
COPPA states that a website may not KNOWINGLY require or track personal information (age, name, address, email address, etc) of anyone underage. All ICQ has to do to remove itself from any concern is take the age category out of their demographic marketing information gathering registration section. Suddenly, they'll no longer knowingly be tracking anything from a child under 13. To them, everyone will simply be a 'user' or a 'member'.
In fact, removal of an age section is the solution many sites and services have used. The only problem is that a lot of companies grasp onto their precious marketing-machine to gather data on every aspect of their users and they find it more valuable to track ages than to allow the younger set to enjoy the use of ICQ (and other services) too.
Also, if I recall, doesn't this only apply to commercial services? Does ICQ (since it provides a free service without advertisements) even fall under the commercial service regulation? I suppose it probably does... Still, this whole thing is rediculous.
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seumas.com
No, what I'm looking forward to is a fully distributed system of communication where every client is also a sort of server. De-centralize the control and operation of such a system and you also shrug off the responsibility and legal implications of it. How do you stop 60,000,000 freely distributed and connected clients?
There would also be less interest in such a sytem, for tracking personal data for demographic databases. I don't believe COPPA refers to any information provided where a person says "I am 12 years old and my email address is haxorboy@hotmail.com". It applies, if I read it correctly, to the collection of this information. Thus, on a distributed system, there would be no centralized databse with a collection of this information. If the user is connected to the network and has entered their age or email address or other information into their 'profile', that profile remains on their system and cannot be searched, archived or otherwised gathered and manipulated. Once they disconnect, all about them is removed from availability until they connect once again.
Maybe that's dumb. I dunno. It just seems like a better solution.
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seumas.com
it's a good thing they did that, because we know that all 13 year olds are entirely too computer illiterate to lie about their age in an incredibly complex system such as ICQ.
Thank you, ICQ, for putting your foot down and saving america from itself.
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
This is probably the really obvious thing to ask...but did anyone else receive this message? I wonder if it couldn't have been someone who compiled licq with --spoof-uin (or whatever the compile-time option is) and sent a message from UIN #1 that way. It sounds much like the usual "ICQ will delete so-and-so accounts if you don't forward this message" spam that goes around once in a while.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Remember, this is not the same as the Core fiasco. Strictly speaking, anything like ICQ which provides not only communications and reveals things like IP addresses, can be construed as privacy invasion. Simply speaking, children under 13 cannot legally waive these rights. AOL is only covering itself from a lawsuit, in the case of a pedophile or someone else arranging a meeting. I don't think it's an afront on freedoms, but I'm over thirteen, so maybe I'm biased.
I would think AOL and ICQ would be covered by common carrier priveledge in the case of a lawsuit, but American's are so sue-happy that someone will end up suing them anyway.
----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
I had just installed mandrake 7.1 beta just after this message had been sent out. seems that the GnomeICU had set my date of birth to Jan. 1st, 1999. the next morning, I found that my UIN had been deleted. even numerous emails questioning what had happened went unanswered. The final result was that I lost my UIN, because the people at Mirabilis/AOL, in all their infinite wisdom, felt that I was an extremely intelligent 17-month-old baby boy.
I'm just the prodigal son, aren't I?
bleh.
I thought that ExTrans was "broken" for a long time. Now I've found out that ExTrans is finally working as designed. It just isn't very clear what it's supposed to do.
If you want to bold your text, choose "Plain Old Text", and put any of the "Allowed HTML" tags listed below it into your message.
If you have to post *about* HTML, and want to have HTML show up in your message, as you posted above, then choose "ExTrans". In other words, any HTML tags that ExTrans finds it TRANSLATES to plain text so that the HTML code appears in your post.
IMHO, both options I listed are badly named. The other option, HTML formatted, allows more HTML but not (for example) pre tags -- so I couldn't show you exactly what I meant in each example.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
It may be stupid and unfair, but it isn't illegal. It would be illegal to discriminate against a protected class, such as by gender, race, religion etc. The applicable federal law can be found here.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I got the same message about two months ago. I had set my info to 8 as a joke. I was _shocked_ to see this message I was checking the uin.. thinking shurely this was a hoax. It was from UIN zero... Ahh... I guess you can no longer set humorous info on icq... maybe I'll just set it to 85 now...
Thank goodness I live in a country that teaches its children from the time they are 13 that you have to lie to obtain basic human rights... like ICQ
So quick with fear you tiny fools!
Per their terms of service, Yahoo! doesn't allow users under 18 to post personal ads. However, a lot of the non-porn ads state that the woman's age is 18 in the header, and then the first sentence of the body is "hi im actually 16/f but they wouldn't let me put 16."
Unless they start doing age verification through more trusted sources (can you say privacy invasion?) on the Internet, nobody will know you're a minor.
For more information, click here.
The link between the two is getting thicker every day. Try logging into AOL Instant Messenger using your ICQ user number as your "screen name." AOL owns ICQ, so ICQ users can no longer feel all warm and elitist about their choice of messaging software.
For more information, click here.
COPA (which I understood had been repealed) only required that places which REQUIRE or SOLICIT personal data from children under the age of 13 acquire parental permission.
ICQ does not require this data. Thus, don't provide it and ICQ won't have any compelling reason to remove your account. This is not 'circumventing' anything by proving no (or fake) information, since it is never required to begin with.
Also, I have to wonder how this effects users outside of United States jurisdiction.
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seumas.com
The message he recieved may be a hoax, but if you follow the link to the Tos/aup/whatever on ICQs page, it states that you have to be over 13 blah blah blah, so, even if the contact from UIN#1 was fake, the information behind it is not.
I wish Slashdot would have a different category for stories like this. Misusing the word censorship just dilutes the important meanings, such as government making certain political speech illegal.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Jabber is decentralized in the same sense that email is. Just as every ISP or organization runs its own email server, they can run their own Jabber server. However, your roster (the Jabber term for what That Other IM System calls a "Buddy List"(R)(C)(TM)) may contain users on any Jabber server; when one of the people on your roster sends you a message, or presence information, or whatever, their server contacts your server, which passes it on to you. It's not quite as decentralized as a Gnutella/Freenet setup, but it's a lot more convenient for the end user. And there's nothing stopping you from running a personal Jabber server on your own box (or your site's NAT box, or whatever); if you've got a DNS name pointing to that box, other Jabber users on other servers will still be able to add you to their rosters, and will get your messages and presence as they would anyone else's.
Jabber IDs are expressed as "user@server," just like email addresses; this would make it easy for an ISP to give its users Jabber IDs identical to their email addresses, and with the same passwords for authentication, if desired (assuming they set up authentication correctly). In fact, Jabber IDs may include a third element, the "resource" (making the Jabber ID format "user@server/resource"), allowing a user to log into Jabber multiple times, from different locations and/or different devices.
Since everything in Jabber is done through the server, clients can be very simple. Even so, they can support connectivity to other IM networks (such as ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, and IRC) via services known as "transports" that are run on the server side and translate between the Jabber protocol and "foreign" IM protocols. (Incidentally, if you use the IRC transport to access IRC from Jabber, the IP address the IRC people will see is the IP address of your Jabber server. This is both good and bad; good because they don't see your real IP and hence can't portscan you, bad because it makes it easier for server admins to block all Jabber users if they get honked off at us.) An administrator can install a transport, and the users of that server can begin using it immediately, without any changes required to client software.
Finally, in regard to the topic of this article: Jabber can collect personal information about its users, if (and only if) they choose to provide it. (It stores it on the server, and in the Jabber User Directory, in the proposed XML vCard format.) This information can (but need not) include birthdate and/or age. How this will balance with the requirements of COPPA is a subject that has been weighing on my mind for awhile now. My gut reaction is "we just write the server; it's up to whoever runs it to follow the policy," but in some senses, that's kind of a cop-out. Perhaps one of the things Jabber.com should work on is a system to catch all users who have entered birthdates that would make them less than 13 years old (i.e., before July 3, 1987, as of the day I'm writing this) and send them notices and/or automagically delete them. In essence, we would be enabling a Jabber server administrator to do exactly what ICQ is now doing. I know that some people might view this as caving in to The Man, but, as the saying goes, "Dura lex, sed lex." ("The law is hard, but it's the law.") I'm sure ICQ doesn't like the thought of having to take this kind of action any more than I do, but...
For more information about Jabber, visit one of our Web sites, the JabberCentral site, the open-source development site, or the company I work for.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the core Jabber.org developers, and an employee of Jabber.com, Inc., but I don't necessarily set policy or speak for either organization.
Eric J. Bowersox
Software Engineer, Jabber.com Inc. (subsidiary of Webb Interactive Services, Inc.), Denver, CO
Developer, Jabber Project (author, ICQ transport)
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Be who you are...and be it in style!
Ok, just a notice to the Slashdot admins...If anyone takes away my account because im 7 1/2, someone is going to get their anus haX0red. SwiftBob :-:mp3.com/PhysicsOfASquall ::
-Swift
-Swift
Marketers are less likely to spam people they think are under the age of 13. No credit card and less interest in porn than adults. I'm glad /. doesn't ask age, adults signing up as children would throw off the demographics so much that you might get Twinkie Winkey as our moderator.
What we really need is OFIPA (Old Fogie Internet Protection Act). After all, who is it who actually to fall for stupid viruses like ILOVEYOU? Who asks the most questions to tech support? Worst of all, who actually believes AOL is the internet? Besides, how many of them would realize that all they neecd to do is change the birthday they listed? It wouldn't really protect them from the internet; it would protect the internet from them.
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy." -Richard Feynman
Also, it isn't 13. It's 12. The law (last I read it) was specifically with regard to children UNDER the age of 13. Teenagers are not part of the age-group this law deals with.
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seumas.com
They hope to be able to sayMeanwhile, they're doing this knowing full well, as has been pointed out, that those under 13 will just enter whatever age will allow them access to the servers. And probably selling ad space based on targeting an under 13 demographic, if the sales department misses the memo from legal.
How can you say anything about old men posing as 13 year old boys when you have committed and admitted to commiting perjury? Smooth move buddy.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Hrmph. Teenagers have the largest amount of disposable income of any demographic. 13 year olds are right about at the edge of the age where they start consuming alot more.. I suspect anyone around that age who just got their account shutoff will not be willing to suggest their friends go to AOL... or their parents.