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Virtual Assistants Such As Amazon's Echo Break US Child Privacy Law, Experts Say (theguardian.com)
Mark Harris, reporting for The Guardian: An investigation by the Guardian has found that despite Amazon marketing the Echo to families with young children, the device is likely to contravene the US Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), set up to regulate the collection and use of personal information from anyone younger than 13. Along with Google, Apple and others promoting voice-activated artificial intelligence systems to young children, the company could now face multimillion-dollar fines. "This is part of the initial wave of marketing to children using the internet of things," says Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy advocacy group that helped write the law. "It is exactly why the law was enacted in the first place, to protect young people from pervasive data collection."
As a parent, are you not old enough (informed enough should be the metric, but our society is bewildered about age) to decide if your kids can use the device?
Oh, right, parenting. Not allowed to do that any longer, my bad. "It takes a village" (to pillage your informed personal and consensual choices, not to mention parenting.) Of course you're not old enough. We'll decide that for you. Move along. Move along.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
children are not buying these heroins.
How is this not simply the parents' choice? Kids aren't buying heroin units and installing/using them. It's parents. If they make the conscious decision to introduce such a heroin into their homes, and decide to use them, that's all there is to it. They have chosen to be a household that uses this heroin and its associated heroins. If they don't like the implications of that, they can simply choose not to put the heroin in a space where kids will interact with it, or choose not to use it at all.
People who are trying to make it more complicated than that are just looking for ways to get government more involved in what goes on inside the home.
It's not just Echos. We've cut the cord and my kids use Roku's to watch most of their TV. Services like Hulu track all that garbage, but are making absolutely no effort to determine the viewers age. Netflix at least has age categories you can assign to profiles, but I don't see any COPPA parental control panel for the young kids. Its only to limit the catalog to the less sexual/violent media. I'm sure their lawyers give them the "It's technically legal because it's just one account" thumbs up. But if Hulu is recommending to me to watch Daniel Tiger, then clearly my kids viewing data is being saved. Saying it's the parents choice, is like saying its the parents choice to let kids use the Internet. My 9 year old daughter doesn't have a choice, her homework from school requires her to go to certain websites. I'm not suggesting that COOPA is or isn't effective, or that further regulations are needed. I'm just pointing out that "parents choice" isn't a very valid argument.
The kids gotta learn to start ignoring ads at some point in their life.
I have an Amazon Echo, use it everyday, and have never once heard an ad for anything. This is not about ads. It is about recording voices, and storing the data. They store the data so they can improve their algorithms, and users can provide feedback if the Echo misunderstands a request. They may use the data for other things as well.