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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."
How is this not simply the parents' choice? Kids aren't buying Echo units and installing/using them. It's parents. If they make the conscious decision to introduce such a device 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 device and its associated services. If they don't like the implications of that, they can simply choose not to put the device 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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The kids gotta learn to start ignoring ads at some point in their life.
Maybe we're looking at this wrong. Educate them early on what worthless advertising is...and train them to ignore it.
This will greatly benefit them as young and older adults.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Do not take the Guardian and the Center for Digital Democracy at their word.
Read the guidance contained in the second link of the summary. Specifically, read: "Who is covered by COPPA" here.
This is a general audience device and service, full stop. I don't have one, so I cannot say whether they even permit the associated account to be set up by a child 13 or under, or allow multiple user accounts with accounts for children 13 or under, but if I were to purchase one, set it up with my Amazon (or Google, for their device) account, and allow everyone in the house to use the device under that account, there would be no violation of COPPA.
The targeting and "actual knowledge" requirements cannot be deemed fulfilled simply because an advertisement shows a child and the service knows that children might be using the service.
FTA:
No, that is a general audience that happens to include children. Targeting children requires a service aspect specifically directed to children.
Notice that the one thing the article does not say is that the FTC has opened an investigation. Merely that the CDD "[is] going to recommend to the FTC that they give industry guidance of how the internet of things and COPPA should work together."
Very little to see here, then...