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ICQ Banishes Children Under 13

Posted by emmett on from the uh-oh dept.

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.

8 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Not A Hoax. Here's Proof by Seumas · · Score: 5
    Please note that the ICQ service is not for use by children under 13 years of age. If it comes to ICQ's attention through reliable means that a registered user is a child under 13 years of age, ICQ will cancel that user's account.

    http://www.icq.com/legal/usenote.html
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    seumas.com

  2. No impact by Wizard+of+OS · · Score: 4

    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
  3. ICQ has blocked 13 users for a long time. by Bushwacker · · Score: 5

    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.

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    Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
  4. Um. Did you read the article? by Seumas · · Score: 5
    The article linked to a page on ICQ that stated the same thing. I also linked to a second instance of that page in this post.

    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

  5. How About A Distributed Messaging Service? by Seumas · · Score: 4
    ICQ and AIM are centralized. They have servers that all globally connected clients must go through. But what if someone created a 'Gnutella-like' messaging system with as much popularity? I haven't checked on the Jabber project in quite some time, so I'm not sure if that falls into this category. I don't believe it does; it still requires servers, but they aren't quite as centralized and controlled.

    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

  6. Before You Freak Out by Outlyer · · Score: 5

    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.

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  7. Boo hoo. by generic-man · · Score: 4
    So kids will now have to lie to get an account on ICQ. Big deal. Out of curiosity (and desperation, I know) I visited Yahoo! Personals to see just what kind of women place personal ads on-line. Apparently two kinds do:
    • People advertising pornography, and
    • Women under the age of 18.

    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.
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    For more information, click here.
  8. This Has Only To Do With Your PROFILE by Seumas · · Score: 5
    Like the message said, the PROFILE stated the person was under 13. ICQ offers you the option of opting out of providing any information about yourself, including your age on the profile section of the installation (or new account creation).

    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