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Why Google Is Disabling Kids' Gmail Accounts

Posted by timothy on from the handicapping-them-was-considered-gauche dept.

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."'"

26 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Who's fault is it? by sidthegeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Who's fault is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Children shouldn't be on the internet anyway. They should be readin the bible.

    2. Re:Who's fault is it? by martin-boundary · · Score: 4, Funny

      No need. There's an app for that.

    3. Re:Who's fault is it? by AngryDeuce · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Seems to me that Google should startup a 'Google Kids' to handle things like this in compliance with COPPA. Once the child reaches 12, they can convert it over to a regular Gmail account.

      Parents can administrate, while at the same time teaching their kids how to behave on the internet, teachers can email assignments, etc. As long as control rests solely with the parent, I see no issue with something like that.

    4. Re:Who's fault is it? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually - COPPA needs to die. Parents are supposed to be a child's first line of defense. Then the courts. Simply mandating that kids can't access and/or must be monitored by a provider such as Google is simply asinine. As a parent, and as a grandparent, I'd cheefully counsel my kids how to circumvent COPPA bullshit.

      "See the box, where they ask how old you are? What's the minimum age? Alright, Honey, just add 3 or 6 to that minimum age, so your "birth year" is going to be 19xx, alright? Yeah, I know you're not 20 yet, but THEY don't know that!"

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    5. Re:Who's fault is it? by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, I would be more ok with Google just saying "this isn't a service for children" if they didn't also make TV ads about children having Google accounts. Pick one or the other!

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    6. Re:Who's fault is it? by Galestar · · Score: 5, Informative
      You obviously completely misunderstand the issues at stake here.
      Please read the following;
      Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

      "fuck you kid, come back when you're 18."

      The age is 13, not 18, and because of your ignorance,

      "fuck you Moryath, come back when you know what you're talking about"

      --
      AccountKiller
    7. Re:Who's fault is it? by Defenestrar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    8. Re:Who's fault is it? by Vaphell · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    9. Re:Who's fault is it? by Joe+U · · Score: 5, Funny

      You are seeing that with the OWS people. If you look at the demographics, there are a LOT of people born after 1985 or so. They lived their entire lives without ever seeing a recession. They think the enormous growth of the 90's was normal. Now comes a recession that affects their precious little selves and they freak the fuck out.

      If I can speak for my Generation (GenX), for a moment: (abridged version) Fuck you, Boomers and fuck you Millenials.

      The Baby Boomers for really screwing us over, several times. I look forward to the retirement homes we're going to toss you into on the budget you gave us. The Millenials for being whining idiots that generally fuck up the Internet I helped create. Please build better retirement homes in about 30 years, thanks.

    10. Re:Who's fault is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How is it even a "fault"? Google provides email service FOR FREE. They can do whatever the hell they want with it at any time with or without notification.

      If people don't like it, they can go pay for email somewhere else. The sense of entitlement going on here is ridiculous.

    11. Re:Who's fault is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The iBle.

    12. Re:Who's fault is it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I was watching Venture Bros with a friend, who is a lukewarm Christian , the other day. He was talking about Brock Samson. It went like this.

      I said "Samson, like from the Bible".
      He said "What?".
      I said "Magic Hair, Jawbone of an ass, Paid his gambling debts with foreskins?"
      He said "WHAT? That's not in the bible, you're making that shit up, right?".

      Bible stories FTW.

  2. So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Like every 9 year old on MySpace ever did... just put in the wrong birthyear and everything stays cool.

    1. Re:So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... by NotQuiteInsane · · Score: 4, Informative

      Or go over to yahoo, which is all spammers anyway.

      FTFY.

    2. Re:So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Informative

      Also, the use of the viral video is a little off, since the baby never actually does anything with the account (as the Google spokesman says) - the father signs up for the account and agrees to the terms, the father then composes messages and sends them, the father reads messages received etc etc. Its the father doing things in the babies name, which is a whole different ball game to the kid signing up and using it themselves.

    3. Re:So COPPA is teaching our children to lie... by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

      I dunno, she probably sat there and pooped while he applied for the account, which is maybe her way of expressing her opinion towards the EULA.

      --
      Monstar L
  3. Might as Well Teach them Young To Lie... by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seems a good lesson that often in life one must tell lies of varying degrees. Fibbing about age is one of those.

    Many websites and services (email, web hosting / blog sites, facebook, etc) have age stipulations ranging from 13 to 21, which effectively makes much of the web useless to young people unless they lie.

    1. Re:Might as Well Teach them Young To Lie... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just wait until they sue the kids for violating the law meant to protect them, under the exact same law.

      And then have 'em tried as adults, just for good measure.

      Don't forget to tell your 13-year old kids it's illegal to make n00d self-shots in the mirror with their iPhones. They will be in possession of extremely illegal content one minute after their 14th birthday, be tried as adults and registered as sex offenders for life.

      Remember: all the things we used to do when we were young are now illegal. All.

  4. My daughter was extremely upset as well. by stasike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:My daughter was extremely upset as well. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You Do. Not. Need. A. Copy. Of. My. Passport.

      Actually.. legally.. they do. If you want access to that account again, you can either verify that her parent has authorized the kid to be scaped and indexed and acknowledge that your kid can receive the accompanying advertising, or you can create another anonymous account to have similar advertising, scraping, analyzing done to her anyway. In one case, she gets her account back; in the other case, Google gets their data anyway.

      As much as I'm for privacy, it's not like providing a copy of your passport is providing anything that Google doesn't have on you anyway. They don't even need _your_ google account to link it to, do they (not sure)? They just, legally, need to be sure that a parent/guardian has allowed Google to analyze their kid. US laws, if not your country's laws.

      So perhaps you should explain to your daughter one of two things:
      1. Your resentment of someone verifying that you are you, and you have control over your kid
      2. US laws designed to protect the privacy of kids, and how they're hurting her. Perhaps you can go into how your own country's privacy laws work.

    2. Re:My daughter was extremely upset as well. by MrMista_B · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Free does not mean 'immune from criticism'.

      Why do you imply that it does?

  5. Don't Link Your GMail to Google+ Account by Ron+Bennett · · Score: 5, Informative

    In reply to some comments / sentiments in this thread regarding how quick Google is to delete accounts, be wary of creating a Google+ account / user profile.

    There have been many reports of Google+ accounts being flagged for various reasons (username choosen, duplicate acct, complaints from others, etc) resulting in the linked services, such as, GMail being suspended / terminated too.

    Imho, avoid creating a Google+ account - not so easy now that Google is rolling that out across services, so the next best option is not create a profile; leave it as empty as possible. And keep services separate ... don't use the same Google+ account for GMail as one does for other services (ie. YouTube).

  6. Son's Account Was Reinstated With My Supervision by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hi All,

    I too was put off by Google's disabling of my son's account, but I decided to give Google a chance and see if they would be reasonable. I sent a note to them in the only way I could come up with, by writing it (by hand on a paper), scanning together, my ID, and my note which was an explanation that my son was really under age, and that as his parent, I was the "holder" of his account, but he was using it under my supervision. I sent the note to their photo ID link, and his account was reinstated. I assume that they actually read the note, and allowed this, but it is possible they have an automated process that accepts any photo you send as ID, and automatically reinstates the account. If they do, shame on them. If they don't, I applaud them for being reasonable.

    Rob

  7. Re:You get what you pay for by cheekyjohnson · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Free" doesn't mean "exempt from criticism." That said, they're also free to not listen to you.

    And I think this is really the fault of idiotic "think of the children" laws.

    --
    Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
  8. Get rid of that stupidity by loufoque · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.