

Google Made My Daughter Cry Today - weirdkid
http://matthovey.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/google-made-my-daughter-cry/

======
sz4kerto
> "I’m very, very close to moving all my family’s email accounts off Google."

Says the guy who registered a Gmail address for his children when they were
born and buys a _Chromebook_ for them, since it's great and everything is in
the cloud.

What can I say.

~~~
weirdkid
Exactly. I was a fan; now... not as much.

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gesman
Very Bad: you@your-isp.com

Bad: you@platform-provider.com (gmail)

Good: you@your-lastname.me (or your-lastname.com)

your-lastname.me or your-lastname.com - is the domain you own.

Once you own your own domain and mailbox - just use platform providers (or
ISP) for what they are useful for - as a temporary convenience tools. Always
maintain backups of your mailboxes under your control.

If ISP or platform-provider will misbehave - scrap them for then better
offering.

~~~
joallard
The problem with that is that it's unsustainable. How many ie. Ben Adams would
this work with, ben@adams.me? 1. Now Ben Adams owns `adams.me` and has no
incentive or mechanism to offer his domain to the million other people with
his last name.

~~~
lmartel
His point is more "own the domain you use for email" and less "first@last.me,"
I think.

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fishtoaster
Reminds me of a story that made the rounds in 2011 [0]. The title is almost
the same ("Google made my daughter cry" vs "Hey Google, thanks for making my
daughter cry.").

[0] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/hey-
google...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/hey-google-
thanks-for-making-my-daughter-cry/2011/12/12/gIQAhYx9pO_blog.html)

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sillysaurus2
The number of people saying "It's the law" as if that has any intrinsic
meaning is a little astonishing.

Also, from COPPA: _While children under 13 can legally give out personal
information with their parents ' permission, many websites altogether disallow
underage children from using their services due to the amount of work
involved._

So it's not merely a governmental problem. It's a problem with how much work
companies are willing to put in to let children access their services.

~~~
jellicle
It suits Hacker News to believe that the government is causing Google to
disable accounts, even though that is not true.

~~~
drivingmissm
It isn't a belief. Even if Google obtained parental consent by law it still
can't market to children-- since Google's services are a giant marketing
engine, it is reasonable for them to disable children's accounts.

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vezzy-fnord
Although I personally oppose it and find it asinine, I'm pretty sure COPPA is
federal law.

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gkoberger
"I’m very, very close to moving all my family’s email accounts off Google."

To where?

~~~
x0x0
i'm sure that this guy whiningly (not a word, but you get what I mean)
continuing to use gmail... will really show google

~~~
jeorgun
Tangential, I know, but sure it's a word:

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whiningly](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/whiningly)

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brechin
We had this same experience with my daughter around the same age. This is also
an issue with Android devices that desire (require?) a Google login when
setting them up.

If you need to have a Google account to use a Chromebook, and the under-13
crowd can't have one, then why do they market Chromebooks to kids and
families? I shouldn't sign into it for her, since then she would have
unfettered access to the net (including my email, Google Wallet, etc.) as ME,
right?

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vacri
All online birthdays are 00:00 Jan 1, 1970. Maybe not for a 9-year-old,
admittedly, but start of epoch is easy for techies to remember. I have yet to
see a birthdate form on the web that would actually be served differently
between this and my actual birthdate.

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jamestnz
This got me thinking, as I have many primary-school clients ("K-6" schools)
making extensive use of Google Apps for Education to give the students access
to various services like gmail, drive, sites, blogger.

So I just did a search, and found the following question and answer on
productforums.google.com[1] from 2009...

Question:

 _We currently have Google Apps Education in our school. Our teachers in the
elementary and middle school have expressed a great interest in using Google
Docs in the classroom. I read on the web that there is a age restriction of
13. Is there anything in the terms of service that indicates this and what is
Google 's position on using Google docs in k-5 classrooms._

Answer:

 _If you are using Google Docs within Google Apps Education Edition for your
school domain, your school assumes the responsibility for complying with COPPA
and the information that students submit. When offering online services to
children under 13, schools must be cognizant of Child Online Privacy
Protection Act (COPPA). COPPA is a regulation that requires parental consent
for the online collection of information about users under 13. Per the Google
Apps Education Edition Agreement, any school administering Google Apps
Education Edition acknowledges and agrees that it is solely responsible for
compliance with COPPA, including, but not limited to, obtaining parental
consent concerning collection of students ' personal information used in
connection with the provisioning and use of the Services by the Customer and
End Users._

 _Parental consent and notification could take place in form of a permission
slip granting use of Google Apps and /or other technology services at the
school. For more information on complying with COPPA see the FTC's website at
www.ftc.gov/coppa._

EDIT:

From [2], google have also said:

 _Asking for age information helps us provide features like age-appropriate
settings to our users, who are interacting more every day with the people they
know. Under our policies, Google doesn’t allow users who are under the age of
13 to have Google Accounts, unless they are using Google Apps for Education
accounts through their school. This is similar to a lot of online services, as
it 's very complicated for many providers to offer better solutions for
children that meet the relevant regulations._

[1] [http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-
educati...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/google-
education/K2PJEQyl754)

[2] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/hey-
google...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/hey-google-
thanks-for-making-my-daughter-cry/2011/12/12/gIQAhYx9pO_blog.html)

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byjove
It's the law:

[http://www.coppa.org](http://www.coppa.org)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Online_Privacy_Prote...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act)

~~~
intelliot
Indeed. This problem is caused by the U.S. Government, not Google.

So more accurately: A US Federal Law Made My Daughter Cry

~~~
anarchy8
That's not correct. More likely, they were too lazy to be COPA compliant.

~~~
drivingmissm
COPPA compliance includes no marketing to children, even with parental
consent. So they'd have to operate a completely different platform for
children. Plus their business model is based on marketing, so they'd take a
huge loss operating a second platform for kids. It is stupid to expect Google
to accommodate children.

~~~
tjgq
It's not really a second platform, is it? It's more like adding a single
configuration bit to an account that determines whether it is eligible for
marketing campaigns (or whatever else it is they can't do with children).

It's even likely that they already have such a thing in place for debugging
purposes.

~~~
vacri
I'm intrigued by this system you suggest that manages to get an entire engine
for obtaining 'verifiable parental consent' squished into a single
configuration bit, along with an engine to directly notify parents, to allow
parents to view all the collected data, and provide deletion from backups.
That's one busy bit.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act#Compliance)

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sbierwagen
Eyeroll.

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Jugurtha
Kids cry and cops eat donuts. So ?

