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Stricter COPPA Laws Coming In July
Velcroman1 writes "The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was enacted in 1998. In 2011, the FTC beefed up the measure, preventing sites from collecting personal information from kids such as name, location and date of birth without a parent's consent. This July, new amendments for kids under 13 will go into effect, approved by the FTC in December. The rules are targeted at sites that market specifically to kids. However, even a site like Facebook could be fined for allowing minors to post self-portraits, audio recordings of their voice, and images with geo-location data. There are also new restrictions on tracking data, with cookies or a unique identifier that follow registrants from one site to another."
How about we stop it with the nanny-state crap and FUD about online and have parents -gasp- parent? You know, like tell you kids basic stuff like don't give out addresses online, don't go meet people online, etc. This will be a never ending battle, anytime a kid does something stupid and gets hurt because of it people will petition the government to "do something" and slowly the internet gets regulated to death.
Seriously, how hard is it to tell your kid don't tell someone where you are and don't meet them?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This might keep video game websites from making you enter your date of birth to watch their videos!
I always wondered what the point of that was. Anyone who wants to see the video is going to lie about their age if they're under 18!
Cripple the internet for all! This nonsense is the reason I can't get my daughter an email address without lying on some form somewhere, which itself is probably considered "hacking" or something similarly crazy
Short of insisting that everyone who visits provide photo ID, I cannot see how this could work.
Surely any kid with two brain cels to rub together already knows to just lie about their age, or to use their best friend's e-mail for the parental approval?
Three Squirrels
It's not so much about parents parenting but about stopping the powerful from taking advantage of the powerless. It's kind of like what the whole Transformers' cartoon crap was: the show was a full half-hour length commercial for toys. It takes the FCC or governmental action to stop everything on TV from being straight-out plain marketing to kids who can't tell the difference between content and commercials, between truth and puffery/advertising, between reality and fantasy.
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It's why kids fall for things like opening themselves up to ridicule and bullying on sites like formspring or (while it existed) dailybooth, where junior-high-schoolers I knew (and even middle-school kids below us) set themselves up to deviants and bullies asking them stupid salacious questions and they answered them. Now of course they brought a bit of it upon themselves by their own action, but sometimes it is up to those who are more responsible to get in the way of the weak from being trod upon, eh?
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Consumer laws exist to protect adults from sleazy car salesmen and criminally-intent stock-brokers (though kickstarter and the decrease in regulation of allowing funding of companies is going to kick down that safety net). IMHO it's okay to have laws that protect kids at or under the age of 13 from the nefarious intentions of the googler-corporations of the world. I know that the free-market-eers and the libertarians will say "let the free market work it out" and "let capitalism work it out", but sometimes regulations are necessary so that the young and weak are not exploited.
As the father of a daughter who will be 13 in less than a week, I can say that COPPA was ridiculous in the first place. Like so many laws and regulations in place today, it provides nothing but the illusion of security. To those who believe it accomplished something... Sorry, but you've been had. Your kids likely have every account imaginable and because you're so naive you don't have a clue. Not only that, but because of the restrictions, your kids have been missing out on really good opportunities that they otherwise may have had.
Sadly because of COPPA, we haven't seen many services developed geared towards kids. Our children are likely missing out on huge educational opportunities simply due to the fact that providing internet services to them is such a pain in the ass. Frankly, it pisses me off because in my opinion, the government should have no say over what I allow my daughter to share online. Policing her is my job as her father, not yours. Knowing what I need to know to do so is also my problem. If I were to choose not to, that would be my own problem.
firefighter here. There are different ways of funding a fire dept and in many ways it operates differently from other govt services, particularly in volunteer depts.
One way is to have the town pay for it, with money collected through taxes.
Another is to have the fire district (a taxing organization independent of town govt) collect their own taxes.
However, if there is not enough tax revenue to support a fire dept, then some small towns simply don't. What usually happens then, is that the fire dept funds itself through service fees or donations. In the case in the link the yearly fee was only $75, but because it wasn't mandatory, the homeowner didn't pay it.
Are you serious? What HR professional is going to openly say that is their policy? After all that HR experience they'd have to be extremely foolish!
I PERSONALLY KNEW AN HR PERSON WHO SAID THIS, OFF THE RECORD. I won't say which major retail chain box store or for what positions (corporate office positions) this was done but it did happen and yes, anything they didn't like on your public facebook profile would get you rejected. While some people who looked fun at a party would get picked. It was never against people without facebook directly, it was the result of NOT being able to judge you using facebook. Think about it: If your decision is influenced based upon google results and facebook info and somebody LACKS that information, you are more likely going with the people you feel you understand better. I imagine it differs now with people locking down their public facebook information... but I can't find out because that office of HR people were laid off. (Yes I took glee in thinking how bad it is for this person given how much bad looking stuff was on their profile! Naturally, I asked about their hypocrisy: "I'm going to work here for life. I don't have to worry.")
Don't ever think that HR people actually do their job impartially (or intelligently.) All that training they get is about how to BS their way around troubles for the corporation; to protect their employer from the employees.
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