Why Google Is Disabling Kids' Gmail Accounts

theodp writes "The Washington Post's Elizabeth Flock managed to hold Google's feet to the fire and get an explanation of sorts for why it's making kids cry by disabling their Gmail accounts after years of use. Giving 12-year-olds access to Gmail — unless they are using Google Apps for Education accounts through their school — is proving to be as formidable a task for Google as making renewable energy cheaper than coal. But what about that viral 'Dear Sophie' commercial, asked Flock, in which a father creates a Gmail account for his baby daughter and uses it to send her photos, videos, and messages that chronicle her growing up? 'The implied understanding,' replied a Google spokesman, 'is that the girl in the story does not have access to the account, but that she will have access to it "someday."'"

Comments

Who's fault is it?

[sidthegeek]

Is it Google's fault? Or COPPA's? Or both?

Re:Who's fault is it?

[Defenestrar]

I think teaching how to circumvent COPPA is dangerous without teaching when to do so. There are a lot of age verification things out there on the internet and they're not all for the same reason. COPPA is for preventing a child from disclosing too much personal information for use by another party without informed consent of the parent (i.e. marketing and solicitation). I think teaching a child not to give out their real birth date online is a very valuable lesson. (Birth date and state are enough info for an accurate guess at a social security number, and the region can probably be obtained with a reasonable chance of success for a child (lower chance to have moved from the area of birth)). Other age verifiers are for content, some websites self regulate, others follow third party guidelines (e.g. ESRB). I expect to be the final word in what content my children permissibly access on the internet, but I do appreciate the age checkers as a sign for younger children to stop and ask permission. Older children are going to do their own thing according to what you've taught them up to that point.

Also, I've always been surprised that the age submission check is considered a valid method for absolving an entity of COPPA's requirements considering the lengths they have to go through if they do know they are dealing with a child. It seems rather trivial in comparison to these requirements:

Website operators must use reasonable procedures to ensure they are dealing with the child's parent. These procedures may include:

obtaining a signed form from the parent via postal mail or facsimile;

accepting and verifying a credit card number;

taking calls from parents on a toll-free telephone number staffed by trained personnel;

email accompanied by digital signature;

email accompanied by a PIN or password obtained through one of the verification methods above.

Operators who follow one of these procedures acting in good faith to a request for parental access are protected from liability under federal and state law for inadvertent disclosures of a child's information to someone who purports to be a parent.

Re:Who's fault is it?

[Vaphell]

You have it backwards. Having ridiculous laws is much worse than not having laws at all. Ridiculous laws will be broken and this is what undermines the very respect for the law.
Also protecting the precious snowflakes at all costs has dire consequences when they meet the harsh bitch called life completely unprepared.

My daughter was extremely upset as well.

[stasike]

One day my pre-teen-aged daughter wanted to set up an avatar for her Google mail account, like her best friend had. A nice pony or whatever. So we have opened the settings and one of things that Google wanted to know was the date of birth. After naively filling in the date (*not* the real number, but still way low age) ... poooof ... the account was gone. And mind you, this was account my daughter has created in an "IT" class. In my country we do not have educational accounts the article talks about.

In one second the account is there, the next ... gone.
Google wanted scan of my ID or something.
YOU ARE NOT GONNA GET IT GOOGLE!!! You Do. Not. Need. A. Copy. Of. My. Passport.

So we have created another account with a slightly different name, but my daughter has been upset for quite a long time. Still is, in fact. And I had to explain why Google are such ... bloody morons.

The same day I have made backup of my entire Google mail account. I do not trust them anymore that they won't pull the same stunt with MY personal account.

Re:Don't Link Your GMail to Google+ Account

[future assassin]

That's why I deleted all my youtube accounts a few weeks back because Google insisted I link everything to anything about me and couldn't opt out anymore, hmm no thanks which really sucked as one of the channels was pretty big but so be it. So ATM im n a replace google search mission. I guess Dogpile and Duck Duck Go as suggested a few days ago will do for now.

I deleted my Facebook about 4 years ago since they wanted more now I see Google is the new minister of information which doesn't take much to be corrupted.

Get rid of that stupidity

[loufoque]

When I was ten (1997), I had an account on virtually all website/email services that were big (relatively) at the time. There was never question of deleting my account because I was a kid.

Stripping kids of the right to use that kind of service is the same as stripping kids from having the right to use the Internet. This is preposterous and stupid.
American people, get rid of that law.