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Amazon Calls Children's Privacy Complaint Groundless
theodp writes "Eleven groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Junkbusters, filed a complaint with the FTC, asking that it investigate Amazon for violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. An Amazon spokesman called the complaint groundless because "Amazon.com is not a site directed at children." So what was the deal with those Amazon Press Releases for the Harry Potter Magical Candy Contest For Children Ages 6 to 13, Toy Quest Toy Design Contest For Kids 12 And Under, and the Be a Poet Contest For All Kids 12 and Under?"
Update: 04/23 23:54 GMT by T :theodp writes with an update from Ad Age which says that Amazon has "announced it has removed children's identifying information from its Web sites."
...but it's hard to fault Amazon too harshly. If you let 12 year-olds type in any form, they have the opportunity to reveal personal information. You can either completely deprive them of keyboard input, or you can attempt to screen for mistakes. I would err to the side of empowering them, and keep a sharp lookout for infractions.
A system that might be helpful (though it would detract from the number of participants) would be to require that kids typing on forms be sponsored by an adult (proven with at least a non-charged credit card number) and that adult would then receive copies of all the text the child typed at an e-mail address of choice. This would give parents the opportunity to monitor what data had got out, and shift the responsibility for properly screening it onto their shoulders, without requiring them to regularly comb through Amazon to see what had been posted.
Of course the deeper social issue of using the Internet as a babysitter and requiring that the rest of the world baby-proof the information universe is certainly worth addressing.
The Iraqi Information Minister confirms that there are in fact "NO CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 13 IN THE WORLD" and thus these complaints are groundless. "The last children were born in 1990" he continued, and stated no more would be born for at least a decade.
Perhaps it was the virus....
Amazon Tech: "We just can't get rid of this damn thing"
All those releases were dated for late 1999. The Children's Protection Act wasn't in place until 2001. Whoever submitted this article sure went to a lot of trouble to make Amazon look hypocritical.
And what about "The story of ping"?
Ages 4-8.
Not a lot of sense closing the barn door, after the horse is gone...
Amazon.com can get out of this just by using their normal business strategy. Patent protecting children online. Then they can counter-sue all these groups for violating the patent.
I hope Bezos doesn't read slashdot, I don't want to give him any ideas.
Jason
ProfQuotes
eBay is also being targetted by the same complaints and investigation.
Why do I h8 apple?
Riiight...and TRU isn't aimed at kids at all.
"Toysrus.com
Founded in 1998, Toysrus.com really gained momentum when it formed an alliance with Amazon.com in 2000. The site became an online retailing success story by more than tripling its sales and number of orders from the prior year and by giving guests a terrific online toy-buying experience. Since that time, Toysrus.com and Amazon.com have introduced two additional online shopping experiences with the launch of Babiesrus.com and Imaginarium.com."
From the zdnet article: Amazon is letting children 12 years old and younger post reviews of toy products without their parents' consent
Maybe I'm naive, but I have to ask, "How do you enforce this?"
The poster above suggests using a credit card as proof of age, but still,
1) if the cc is not being charged, how is the parent to know that it is being used for ID?
2) How is Amazon to know that the cc is or isn't being used with parent's consent?
SCO to Hell
Amazon is letting children 12 years old and younger post reviews of toy products without their parents' consent.
How dare they allow my little angels to post a toy review without my express consent! I shudder to think of how many children will have their innocence corrupted because they are exposed to speech that has not been censored by a vigilant adult.
Even worse, they may expose themselves to predators online if they are allowed to post without parental approval. You know: "My name is Jimmy and I think this toy is real neat and I live with my parents in the big red house on the corner of Mulberry Street and the back door is unlocked." That kind of thing. Perhaps we should block our children from accessing websites altogether: it's a dangerous world out there.
So the article suggest that they company should ask for peoples ages. Now this I can see as a deterrant but if a child find that putting in under 13 redirects them to disney.com what is to stop then just signing up again and changing their age?
What I'm basically trying to say that the parents should be monitoring what their kids are doing. Treat the internet as the same the street. Don't talk to strangers or give out personal information
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Easy. You ask users for their date of birth, and then restrict features appropriately.
There is a certain amount of responsibility on the parents of said young children to know what they are doing and where they are going on the Internet. Sadly many parents are so ignorant about all this stuff that they don't have the know how to even monitor what their children do online. My daughter (who's currently in the works) is going to be supervised... and I'll likely set up a proxy of some sort so I can bust her later if she goes to playgirl.com ;)
I'm just sick of people blaming their failure as a parent on someone else.
The CNET article links to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 on the FTC site.
Check it out. If you read through some of the reviews, you'll see stuff like "I bought it for my 7 year old, but my 17 year old loves it too!"
See? Amazon stuff is for everyone, so can blame them for selling to kids too?
One can ask for dob, but I don't see how you can validate it. How do you prove that the dob is not false.
:-)
You can ask three questions (that adults can answer), just like at the beginning of Leisure Suite Larry
A dingo ate my sig...
Parents should be responsible indeed. Even when your kids shoot up their highschool. If parents (and yes, I *am* a parent) had to take responsibility for their kids actions, and that meant consequences for their kids actions, parents would pay a LOT more attention and be a LOT more involved.
whenever bad laws get applied to entities with money. This is usually the only way the laws get struck down or narrowed by the courts.
Why is this law bad? Because lawmakers can't seem to understand what can and can't be legislated. This is another law that makes about as much sense as the "evil bit" joke RFC. Just because it's a good idea to prevent something doesn't mean you can. It would be good to keep childern from playing in the streets as well, but you won't see millions spent on "you must be this tall to enter" signs.
-Ryan C.
-Ryan C.
Come on...drive down a street, any street, and open a mailbox. You'll get the last name. Watch the house. You'll see if there are kids. If you listen, you'll hear the parents call out their kid's names.
If someone is a pervert, being armed with a name and a city/state isn't going to make them do something. They're going to do something because they're a pervert, and they'll be able to get a name with no problem regardless. Come on.
... I find that nothing irritates my parents quite like posting my full name, age, and their credit card number to online retail sites.
/. baby.
It is much more effective than disobeying, and the odds of them finding out about my disruptive behavior are next-to-none... plus I get a major website in trouble!
Sincerely,
Johnson Doe (555-55-5555)
P.S. - Is 555-55-5555 a valid SSN? I hope not. I disavow all knowledge if there is a Johnson Doe with that SSN. You're on
This space for rent.
Maybe I'm naive, but I have to ask, "How do you enforce this?"
More importantly - why should I care?
If Amazon had a "pedophile" section - that might bother me. Or if there were a chat room on Amazon where people might actually be able to interact with an unsupervised 12 year old... then I might see how that is bad.
But if a kid is allowed to post up a review... I'm not seeing why the hell that matters - other than the review might suck. Even then, 12 is still pretty mature - 5 year olds... maybe even 7 year olds - but 12? Hell, that is middle school! Those are young adults.
But the truth of the matter - if you really wanted to get Amazon to care about kids on the site - make it clear to them that you would have bought the product, but you didn't because you saw that a 12 year old reviewed the product and was *obviously* unsupervised - therefore you went and bought the product elsewhere.
Then Amazon will have reason to care.
Even then, I don't see why they should have to care why some people are just insanely uptight and apparently have a lot of free time on their hands.
I would also think that a larger problem isn't the kids posting reviews, but actually buying crap.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
there were actually more than three questions... they started out with stuff that only a baby boomer would know (like "what was richard nixon's dog's name?") and got progressively more current until your age range could be estimated.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
The difference is that there are likely (or at least potentially) people on any street in America.
People who will see you opening the mailbox that isn't yours, people who will see you "watching the house". These aren't foolproof, but they're at least possible.
Conversely, there isn't anyone watching you troll the Amazon boards looking for kids giving away information.
To clarify: were you saying COPPA is a bad thing?
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
How about we don't hold people (or companies) responsible for things they can't control? People lie. Kids lie. It is impossible for Amazon to prevent children from posting reviews (or doing anything else). Each parent should be responsible for their own kids' behavior. Not Amazon, McDonalds, Microsoft, Michael Jordan, or anyone else.
A modern day witchhunt.
Those releases the submitter cited are for the parents. Just because something is about kids doesn't mean it's for kids. I'm quite sure the target audience for the diaper ads in Parents magazine doesn't include my infant son.
But surely the submitter will go to heaven, for not only has he submitted a story about the abuses perpetuated on the common man by a large entity (Microsoft, Amazon, US government), he added his own attack to the submission. Well done, faithful servant. Perhaps you can also dig up some incriminating press releases at Microsoft. Better yet, attack the evil entities where it hurts...the wallet! Did you know that OSDN is "the No. 1 network for delivering visitors who have shopped for or purchased software online in the past 6 months"? Go get 'em tiger! Take down OSDN and then post your deeds here...errr...well...I'm sure we'll hear about them.
Power to the people!
By saying a business is targeting children as a market, you are saying that:
1)The business is expecting children to go to the location of that business,
or
2)Go where that business's product is located,
and
3)Purchase that product or service in response to their advertising campaign.
Now tell me: How many 10 year olds have credit cards? Amazon targets the people who are legally able to have their own credit card - ADULTS! Ok maybe 15-17 year olds get copies in their parents' names, but still...
And in response to this quote:
"The fact is that parents give their kids the means to pay for things. When a parent does that, they're in effect giving their consent to their child interacting with a Web site."
This is absolute bullshit. Posession of a credit card has nothing to do with the act of using a website. By applying that quote to ALL websites, does it then imply that parents are giving consent to their children to use pr0n sites simply because they gave their kids their credit card info? If that's the case, then those parents should be the ones accused of endangering children, not Amazon. But let's put that aside for a moment, because that is just a hypothetical.
I don't need a credit card to post to most blogs, message boards, or guest books - which is basically what Amazon's customer review feature is. If this is truly about children giving out personal information, any 6 year old that knows his/her name and address can do the same thing anywhere else.
This is simply another case of parents wanting society to raise their children for them.
I agree, with one addition. The adult "releases" the information.
No, it is the parents job to protect their children, not the rest of the world's. If a parent is going to sit a child in front of a computer and give them internet access that they can't trust to use responcibly, than anything that happens is the parents own fault and only the parents fault, not the website that the kid wondered onto that doesn't even have a solid way of knowing the age of the user.
What?! that $1000 computer I bought can't even babysit?! What's the point!
Seriously, I've thought this ever since people were upset kids were watching too much violence on TV or in computer games or seeing porn on the Internet. It's not technology's job to keep children safe (I guess when there are cyborgs having children it might be a different story...)
HTTP Status 418
Before trying to summarize the article, try reading it. It is NOT about Amazon getting the Child's information, it is about the stupid-assed kids who post their personal address in REVIEWS OF PRODUCTS. If a kid is smart enough to post reviews, but dumb enough to put his friggin address there, maybe natural selection will kick in and do it's job (with the help of some psycho-maniacs, of course).
So what was the deal with those Amazon Press Releases for the Harry Potter Magical Candy Contest For Children Ages 6 to 13...
The site is not targeted at children, simply because children do not have credit cards!! These press releases are targeted at the adults to purchase these neat toys for their kids. Duh!
What is it with /.ers hating Amazon? I shop Amazon on a daily basis, and think of them as the greatest web page ever created. Whatever you've got against them, get over it. It's getting kind of old.
Speaking as a parent, I agree with you, but there's something you need to consider. A parent cannot look over their child's shoulder during every waking hour. That's why parents want technology to help them. For instance, the ability to block certain channels or certain content (by rating) on TV. This prevents parents from having to sit in the room while their child is watching TV to make sure they don't change the channel to something inappropriate. For computer games, many parents just want stores to avoid selling games with certain ratings to children. With the internet, some parents want content filtering systems that help control what their child has access to. Everything I've mentioned is already available because parents have asked for it. So in that respect, technology CAN play a role in keeping children safe.
Having said that, I feel that (based on the article) Amazon is not really in the wrong. They actively attempt to protect children by removing personal information. If they are going to be required to do some sort of credit card lookup before letting people post reviews, etc, then we'd all better look out for the ripple effect. I like Slashdot, but I sure as heck am not going to provide my credit card number just so I can type this post.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
No shit?! Christ, you need a license just to fix a damn clogged toilet here in Massachusetts and a permit to build a fucking birdhouse, yet the 15 yo teeny bopper down the street can get knocked up by the entire football team and be a Parent-In-Waiting faster than you can say "Ooops the condom broke"...
I have no answer other than mass sterilization and special egg/sperm breeders and lots of test-tube babies... A 5 year waiting period for a child-license, requiring a mandatory 2 year training course that requires carrying RFID-tagged potatoes around...
A parent can work to instill their values in the child to the point where they do not NEED to look over their child's shoulder every waking hour. My parents managed quite well, and I didn't stray very far from what they taught me until I was in college and adult enough to make my own choices. I hope that I can do as well with my son.
I have little sympathy for the point of view that as a parent you don't want to spend your time watching TV with your children, you don't want to be around when they're surfing the net, etc. There are plenty of simple straightforward ways to be present enough to reinforce your values with your children (computers and TVs go only in the public areas of the house, for one big example). If you think your child needs a nanny to make sure they're where they belong, then you better be that nanny, or hire someone who can be one, instead of fooling yourself that they aren't going to be smart enough to foil whatever technological blocks you put in their way.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Part of the problem is making those restrictions apply well beyond reasonable bounds because parents don't want to have to watch their children all the time. As a result a 16 year-old can drive and have sex (in most states) but cannot: buy an "M" rated videogame, watch an "R" or "NC-17" rated film, purchase pornography or most sexual devices. It's all too common to set age restrictions on minors designed to protect them, but go overboard on them.
Likewise as much as parents want to protect and benefit their children it is only right and acceptable for them to go so far. Minors have absolutely no political power, but frequently things are done to them "for their own good". At a certain point parents don't have the right to control their children even if they are below the age of majority.