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Parental Control Software Datamines Kids' Online Conversations
An AP report reveals that web-monitoring software from Sentry and FamilySafe, both developed by EchoMetrix Inc., is harvesting data from kids' online chats, trying to determine their opinions on games, movies, and music. The data is then sold to other companies for advertising purposes.
"In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms. ... Parents who don't want the company to share their child's information to businesses can check a box to opt out. But that option can be found only by visiting the company's Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday."
When you delegate your parental responsibilities.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Part of me wants to give a big Nelson ha-ha to the overprotective parents who install this crap trying to save their children from the eeeevil people on the Internet. Is it really any surprise that the corporations most interested in "protecting" your children are those who have figured out a way to exploit them?
Seriously. EULA or not, this is invading the children privacies. There must be a law against this.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
FamilySafe: Protecting your kids, but not from us!
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
My wife and I view our responsibility as parents as very basic:
1) Provide basic necessities an enjoyments of life (emphasis on necessities)
2) Provide love and a feeling of trust and safety in the home
3) Teach them a strong sense of identity and self-worth
4) Teach our kids what choices are, how to recognize good from bad choices, and how to accept the consequences of you actions
For computers, here's our strategy:
1) Place computers in a open public place (including our own)
2) Teach them that computers are a tool and how people use it for good and bad
3) Openly discuss what acceptable and unacceptable behavior with computers/games are
4) Limit time spent on computer
5) As much as possible, don't create double standards
6) Use OpenDNS and block certain sites depending on their age
We feel parental technology should be used to reinforce what you're already teaching, not as a substitute.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? -- Juvenal
Power does not corrupt - power attracts the corrupt.
"Im sure there was something deep down in the fine print that will derail a suit."
Bullshit. When parents find out their children are being used for profit-making without their consent, not only is it going to be a shitstorm but it just might get COPPA reinstated.
Never underestimate the backlash of millions of pissed off parents. Many of them will do absolutely psychotic things to defend their children from any perceived threat.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You know what I think makes one unfit to be a parent? Commenting on hypothetical parents with hypothetical children using absolute statements that attempt to assert some sort of moral superiority for letting kids do anything they want.
Contrary to what you think, there isn't a right or wrong answer; it's specific to the parents and the child. Some may consider it a good opportunity to let their children go wherever they want on the Internet and then talk about whatever they see as it comes up. That's perfectly healthy. So is wanting to make sure your child is mentally and/or emotionally prepared for such discussion. I don't personally have a problem with sex or relatively small children seeing it, but I certainly wouldn't want to be explaining bestiality or why that man has that woman tied to the ceiling and is hurting her to a six year old. It's also worth throwing in at this point that parental controls are about more than content blocking.
Some people are control freaks, some people are fools, some people will take things farther than they need to go. But thinking differently than you does not instantly make somebody stupid or an unfit parent. It does not make their decisions some disease to avoid passing on at all costs.
Personally, I'd be more concerned about passing on your grammar than a parent deciding porn sites aren't appropriate for a six year old.