Lawyer Rewrites Instagram's Privacy Policy So Kids and Parents Can Have a Meaningful Talk About Privacy (qz.com)

Kids, of age between 12 and 15, are increasingly joining Facebook's Instagram service, but according to a research, they likely don't even understand what they are signing up for. Jenny Afia, a privacy law expert at Schillings, a UK-based law firm, rewrote Instagram's terms of service in child-friendly language, so that not only the kids but their parents are able to understand what things are at stake. Highlighted are the changes the lawyer has made: Officially you own any original pictures and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them, and we can let others use them as well, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and we will not pay you for that. [...] We may keep, use and share your personal information with companies connected with Instagram. This information includes your name, email address, school, where you live, pictures, phone number, your likes and dislikes, where you go, who your friends are, how often you use Instagram, and any other personal information we find such as your birthday or who you are chatting with, including in private messages (DMs). [...] We might send you adverts connected to your interests which we are monitoring. You cannot stop us doing this and it will not always be obvious that it is an advert.

Comments

Irony

[MobyDisk]

Slashdot's front page has:
1. Lawyer Rewrites Instagram's Privacy Policy So Kids and Parents Can Have a Meaningful Talk About Privacy
2. IMDb Ignores New Law Banning It From Publishing Actors' Ages Online, Cites Free Speech Violations

So it is legal for to sell a child's personal information, but not okay for IMDB to publish the ages of grown adults. Does anyone else see this as crazy?

Re:Irony

[bsolar]

You are comparing apples with oranges. IMDB claims it has right to publish the age without the actor's permission, Instagram claims it has right to sell your informations if you agree to use their services, thus granting them permission to do so.

Re:Irony

[erapert]

Did you read TFS?
Did you notice that it's a lawyer who took time out of his day to rewrite Instagram's policy so that children could understand it?

Re:Irony

[Anubis IV]

You do realize that the summary makes it pretty clear it's a UK lawyer rewriting what are presumably their terms of service, right?

The US shares plenty of responsibility when it comes to weird laws and terms of service, but the law affecting IMDB is a California one (which is its own brand of nuts) rather than a national law, and the Instagram terms of service are bad worldwide, not just in the US. If what you got out of those two headlines is that this is a US problem, you may be correct technically, in that the US suffers from them as well, but you've missed the bigger picture: this is a global problem that needs addressing through both cultural and legal changes.

Re:Irony

[sg_oneill]

Instagram claims it has right to sell your informations if you agree to use their services, thus granting them permission to do so.

This is of course assuming a child is competent to enter into a contract, which is not considered a valid assumption in most countries. (I have no idea about the US, but here, judges somewhat frown upon the idea that a child can forfeit rights because of an agreement as they are not considered competent to understand the implications.)

Re:Irony

[Anubis IV]

Ages are public record. Public information is generally considered free to post without restriction nationwide.

Besides which, ages are nothing. My county publishes at least the following for every homeowner as part of their public record, and this is just what I'm aware of:
- First and last names
- Home address
- Mortgage company
- Sales price and date
- Tax exemptions applied
- Taxes paid

With a name or an address, you can search their database to get information on that person, when they moved in/refinanced, and whether they have been granted a property tax exemption for being a senior citizen. If you look back through the historical records and see that the deed listing goes from two names to one, you can tell roughly when they got divorced. And while you can't pull it up online, the mortgage company's name is available through the public record itself, and makes it easy to engage in snail mail phishing. I received countless letters after I moved in, telling me I needed to sign up for their mortgage payment plan. Each of them used my mortgage company's name prominently to add legitimacy to their statements. In some cases they were even postmarked from official sounding departments in my state's capital on a street that just so happened to have the same name as my county, lending even more legitimacy and urgency to their warnings of dire consequences if I didn't sign up.

All of which is to say, I get actors not wanting to have age discrimination against them, but if someone wants to find their age, the weird Californian law does nothing to stop Wikipedia, fan sites, or Joe Schmo from posting it, since it doesn't apply to any of them. It's an odd law that targets a valid use of information in the public domain. And if we're going to go after information that shouldn't be in the public domain, there are plenty of other targets that should be hit before age.

Re:Irony

[HeckRuler]

What? No. They're both apples. They both claim the right to hand out information about kids.

The difference is that according to California, what IMDB is doing is illegal. Because it affects hollywood big business. Nobody gives a fuck about the poor masses on Instagram.

I agree with IMDB. Public knowledge is public. For Instagram, anything posted to the public is free game, but there's could be some expectation of privacy if you send someone a private message about something personal.

I already simplify it for my kids

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

1) Anything you post online will be there forever
2) Always lie about your age, use a fake name, and never provide a real address
3) Don't post nude pics
4) Don't post anything racist, etc.
5) Don't post anything illegal, etc.
6) At any time, I can haz your phone/computer/account and I may burn your devices and your online profiles down to the waterline if I don't like what I see

Re:I already simplify it for my kids

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately kids always do the opposite of what their parents tell them, so I'm looking forward to nude selfies from your teenage daughter on /r/gonewild/ when the time comes. Thanks for setting that up.

Re:I already simplify it for my kids

[gosand]

Kids do not understand why #1 is a bad thing.
You have to follow that up with real-world examples of why and how that could be a problem for them.

I told my daughter "imagine you sent a selfie to your best friend where you had your finger in your nose as a joke. Then what if she thought it was funny and shared it with other friends... then it made it all around your school and people started teasing you about picking your nose." Pretty mild example, but I think she got it. Basically I said once you send something, you have no control over what happens to it.

And just like everything else, they will only truly learn if they are allowed to make mistakes on their own.
I did shit all the time that my parents told me not to do, and I learned - both in good ways and in bad ways - from doing that.
Fortunately for me, there was no way to document those things back then like there are today. :)

Re:I already simplify it for my kids

[AthanasiusKircher]

Also #6 is needlessly autocratic, slightly narcissistic, and (if you ever executed on that threat) quite possibly abusive.

"Abusive"? ABUSIVE?! Are you serious?

If the parent does such things arbitrarily, then I suppose it might be considered "autocratic," but guess what -- families with minor children are NOT democracies! Yes, parents should try to gradually grant more "rights" to their kids over time and help them understand freedom (and I personally believe we're an overprotective society now that doesn't introduce enough freedom early), but ultimately kids are under their parents' care until they cease to be a minor (or are "emancipated" legally).

So a parent is not only responsible for trying to raise the kid well, but the parent is ALSO legally a party to a child's actions, if it can be shown the parent was negligent in supervision or something. Thus, it's perfectly reasonable that -- in sufficiently dire circumstances -- a parent may restrict or even delete online material to protect both the child and him/herself.

Wow. "Daddy stopped me from logging into Facebook -- I'm calling the Child Abuse Hotline!" I just don't even know what to say.

Re:Headline... Headache

[cayenne8]

I think we need to legislate that ALL legal TOS and the like be written in this type of CLEAR and concise and easily understandable verbiage.

There's no excuse for the common man to be held to agreements signed that no one but a lawyer can understand.

If the general public is to be held to these agreements, they must be required to be written in terms that at least a 15 year old can understand.

I know, I know, that's STILL above the heads of the average person by a long shot, but at least it is shooting at a reasonable level for public acceptance.

Re:Headline... Headache

[stranger_to_himself]

I think we need to legislate that ALL legal TOS and the like be written in this type of CLEAR and concise and easily understandable verbiage.

There's no excuse for the common man to be held to agreements signed that no one but a lawyer can understand.

If the general public is to be held to these agreements, they must be required to be written in terms that at least a 15 year old can understand.

I know, I know, that's STILL above the heads of the average person by a long shot, but at least it is shooting at a reasonable level for public acceptance.

It's already enforced in this way for consent to a medical procedure or in academic research. Consent is not considered valid unless the subject understands what they are agreeing to. The frustrating thing for academic researchers is that we have to abide by these standards whereas commercial firms can write garbage in legalese and then do what they like..

TOS Simplicity...however, ...

[TheOuterLinux]

I think TOS should be written at an 8th grade reading level just like they do with Informed Consent for research studies. However, parents should be shot for letting their 12-15 year old have a smart phone. People are making FB profiles for new borns for Christ sake. Sad....

Anything Facebook is right out if privacy matters

[OmniGeek]

The article is informative, but alas, hardly surprising. I read Facebook's TOS recently when considering an account to connect with friends, and was extremely put off by their insistence on knowing *everything* about me, to the point where, if news reports are to be believed, they will buy data on subscribers from private aggregators to fill in their dossier. It is explicitly clear from their TOS that they reserve the right to snoop all the files on my PC and portable devices. "Fuggeddabouddit."

What is this about ''for kids'' ?

[Alain Williams]

Something like this is needed for every site for adults, most of who cannot be bothered to read any ToS and would not understand them if they did. Hell: I suspect a lot of adults would still not remember much about a ToS written like this even if you could persuade them to read it.

This written by someone who does read ToS and frequently refuses to use a service as a result.