On the Web, Children Face Intensive Tracking

theodp writes "In the latest installment of their online privacy investigation, the Wall Street Journal reports that children face intensive tracking on the web, finding that popular children's websites install more tracking technologies on personal computers than do the top websites aimed at adults. In an analysis of 50 sites popular with US teens and children, the WSJ found that Google — whose execs recently lectured parents on online child safety — placed the most tracking files overall."

Comments

Advertising?

[betterunixthanunix]

Considering what sort of advertisements you see on "children's" TV stations, is this any surprise? Children are targets for marketing firms, since they can whine and nag their parents in ways that the firms cannot.

Re:Advertising?

[garcia]

It's not a surprise no but this is Slashdot where we understand these sorts of topics. The Wall Street Journal is not geared towards only those that have a clue about these things.

Now install Ghostery (to begin with) and make sure you are clearing all cookies and cache after every session. Yeah it's annoying but what does my kid need a login for any website for?

Re:Advertising?

[Ryanrule]

plus a childs brain is not fully developed, and advertisers use psychological tricks to force children to think they need things. i think we need to really look at the restricting the speech of advertising companies.

Re:Advertising?

[ndege]

;) Lady Java

And who is surprised by this?

[PerformanceDude]

Most of the children's websites have "premium features" that you can only get to if you buy that virtual fluffy penguin or gold coin. This is just the nag factor at play. I have lost count of the number of times my kids have gone to sites like "Moshi Monster" or "Ella and Max" and found they could only play so far before they need to ask mum or dad for money to go further. If you as a parent can't face the tantrum that goes with the little darlings not being able to play the next level - then your only option is to pay up. Thankfully I can say no, but there are a lot of spoilt brats out there, so there is a market... With market comes cross-promotion opportunities, so tracking enhances the ability to profit. Simple really.

Re:And who is surprised by this?

[sjames]

I don't know if the marketing people have kids, but if they do it would serve them right if they get nice big drum sets and a lifetime supply of sugary candy with double caffeine.

Honestly, a bunch of adults ganging up to deceive children should be deeply ashamed of themselves and society should heap scorn upon them. They are the stereotypical mustache twirling villain that steals the baby's candy just because they can.

Re:And who is surprised by this?

[beakerMeep]

In this case I dont think it's that nefarious. I think it's easily many layers of middle managers trying to do a bit better than the last guy tossing on one more layer of tracking until you get a hairball of cookies, HTML5 DBs, Flash LSOs, etc. Most do not seem particularly intrusive alone, but added together the big picture is kinda creepy.

Still the WSJ article makes it sound like 50 mom and pop web sites using Google Analytics. They don't seem to differentiate that two cookies does not equal twice the tracking. One cookie is all you need to track many metrics.

The stuff I find really unnerving is the social network mining and analysis. The economist had a great story on it: http://www.economist.com/node/16910031?story_id=16910031

Now this isn't just cookies on facebook, but actually recoding how long people talk on the phone to identify them as "influencers".

Between things like Radian6, Experian/Equifax/TansUnion, and RingLeaderDigital, there is some very shady tracking going on. And some of the companies are most definitely trying to tie in personally identifiable information. Certainly, the credit unions are committed to keeping just about every fact they can about you. They mine publicly available court records, work with your credit card companies, and they would love to know your browsing history. Their whole purpose it to create as complete a profile of you as possible. They say they delete the info in 10 years but I think some have been caught being less than diligent.

Anyways, for SOME of the more reputable* ad companies you can opt-out here: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp.

*Relative term

Re:And who is surprised by this?

[sjames]

The sad thing is, there is a legitimate place for sales and marketing, they've just been so busy racing to the bottom for so long that most of what they do now has nothing to do with legitimate practice.

It's to the point where a perfectly honest and reasonable seller can't remain in business unless they tell the truth in a sufficiently over the top way that it becomes gonzo.

Re:And who is surprised by this?

[sjames]

There is an element of frog boiling to it, but honestly if the people involved actually respected others as human beings instead of seeing them as marks it would be clearly apparent that they had gone too far.

We may be in the process of finding out how long a society can hold together when it's based on mutual dis-respect.

I have no problem with sites using Cookies

[HockeyGuy]

Its foolish to say cookies are harmful they are a technology that is required by many online applications and if the end user wants to they can always turn them off or block specific sites from placing a cookie in your cache.

They are not the same as malware.

Cookies are not Malware they can not enter your Operating System and send data to anyone.

What some people are paranoid about is Opening Google Webmail and then browsing porn sites or other not so nice sites....

Hey idiots WEB SERVERS HAVE ACCESS LOGS the sites you visit already know every file you touch on their site ...

Not to mention routers and Squid servers used by your ISP can track all of your actions... and that has nothing to do with cookies.

WAKE UP!

Re:I have no problem with sites using Cookies

[Nursie]

It's not so much the individual sites.

It's the fact that everyone includes and image or a small from from quantserve, google analytics and/or doubleclick and various advertising tracking services.

That, I don't like. Fine, keep track of what I do on your site, but don't surreptitiously have my browser tell all sorts of third parties where it's going too.

I know the ISP can and probably does record everywhere I go. But they are bound to keep the information a secret without explicit permission to share it, IIRC (EU law). Othe sites gaining that information in an underhanded way, information of monetary value that I have not given my permission to have them collect, let alone have them share and sell on, well screw that.

I now block pretty much any third party analytics, images or scripts as a matter of course. Cookies are whitelist-only.

What the?

[cheater512]

This seems to be great for grabbing headlines, but what exactly does Google track that others dont and how does Google know who is a kid and who isnt?

Re:What the?

[angiasaa]

Ah, good point there! As far as I can guess, the only way google can "guess" at the childishness of the user is by tracking the sites visited and drawing conclusions from that.

This, as you suggest, is merely a headline hook. After all, no self-respecting human being ought to be staking their lives on the Wall Street Journal. Goodness knows how much flack they've already taken on other reports, and how much more of it they can and will take. :)

Back to the point though, any site that gives up a cookie does so for tracking reasons. If most people on the planet use one google service or another, it's highly likely that most machines would be eating a lot of google cookies. Pure common sense there!

I really don't see the how storing a cookie on a kids computer would be any more (if at all) dangerous than storing cookies on adults computer. :|

Just sensational media hype this.. Ah, there's my grain of salt! :)

Re:What the?

[metrometro]

Actually, it's not. The site K8 is co-owned by xnxx, a porn forum. xnxx links traffic from their porn forum to the K8 kids site. All things considered, I'd rather not send my kids to a site pre-populated with people who spend a lot of time chatting about porn. More to the point of the story, these aren't people who care about education, kids, etc. It's all business. Which is fine, but I think I'll stick to pbs.org, thanks.

When I was a kid, I had an appetite for "bad" ...

[Anonymous Coward]

People that want to "protect" their kids are willing to destroy the freedom of everyone around them just so they can prevent their kids of expressing the same curiosities as they did when they were young.

When I was at the park, I always hid behind the wall watching the two highschoolers "make out." When I wasn't watching the kissing, I was pooring a bottle of my piss down the ant hill that was "out of bounds" as the teacher punnished me for wandering beyond. When the entire school was on recess at the park, I was the first to run to the benches to see if some "weirdo" left his magazine of unsual Hindu "connect-the-dot" porno.

Now that the internet is here, I can now get back to dreaming about sheep instead of titties. Why do people want to take that away from me then, and then expect me to do the same to my kids if I had any? I would want them to burn theirselves out as soon as possible as I did just so it would be easier to concentrate on a career or something. I sure know that when I was 13 years old, I would pull fixtures or mountings of certain appliences to see if they were fuckable or rubbable, and as soon as I was done with the FAP-worthy material, then I could get back to homework or some constructive activity for 5 or 10 hours without thinking of the ladies again.

Oh God-damn all of you for trying to take this from me. To 4Chan I goooooooo! !O_o!

Obligatory Firefox and plugins list

[markzip]

Perhaps as the WSJ continues its wrong-headed, sensationalistic and, indeed disingenuous* "What Do They Know" series they might just consider telling their frightened readers how to deal with this supposed danger.

But no, the only reference to browsing tools comes in the rather anemic comments section.

Note to WSJ: Next time you scream "won't they think of the kids..." please tell your readers to:

Use Firefox with the following plugins:

• AdBlock (and encourage people to disable it on sites which they visit often)
• Flashblock (to prevent flash objects and ads from running unsolicited)
• NoScript (& selectively enable scripts on your important sites. Temporarily enable just the "main" site for the kiddies game sites)
• Beef Taco (over 100 opt-out cookies in an instant! Easier and more thorough than going to the NAI site)
• Better Privacy (to deal with LSOs/flash cookies)
• CS Lite (simple cookie control)
• Google Analytics Opt-out Browser addon (http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout - also available for IE & Chrome)
• Ref Control (control what is sent as refferer, set to block or forge)
• Track Me Not (if you are really paranoid, sends not quite random search requests in the background)

And use a host file with known tracking company addresses nulled

If my technophobic boss could do all this after one short training session, then WSJ readers can do it too.

*WSJ uses their own and outside scripting, places cookies and places partner tracking cookies, no? Also, if a reader has access behind the paywall, then the WSJ even knows the reader's credit card details.