
Google made my son cry - rostayob
http://www.sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-son-cry.html
======
DannoHung
Google needs a fucking customer support line already. Make it a 900 number if
they need to and charge $20 per call, but for the love of cheese the number of
times something goes horribly wrong and there is little to no recourse is
silly. They refuse to let people pay for their services and thus establish a
billing verification channel but they're asking users to put tons of important
information into them with no recourse if something does happen.

~~~
jdietrich
You are not Google's customer. You are their product. Google make their money
by selling your data and your attention to advertisers. Charging you money and
treating you like a customer creates a conflict of interest that they really
don't want to deal with. Google's strategy of "scalable customer service" is
no accident.

~~~
thurn
The idea that Google (or any major tech company!) has ever even _considered_
selling user data is highly damaging to our industry. I don't expect that kind
of baseless paranoia on Hacker News.

~~~
tptacek
Google's whole business model revolves around selling user data. They don't do
it directly, handing over browser histories to the marcom group at Pepsico;
they do it indirectly, and in a manner that largely preserves privacy. But
that doesn't impact the original commenter's point at all. He's right: at
Google, you're the product, not the customer.

~~~
thurn
Agreed, but there's a world of difference between ad targeting and selling
data, and public perception to the contrary hurts the web industry.

------
zwieback
I must be a total minority here but as a parent of a 9 and 11 year old I'm
shocked how many commenters recommend "just lie" or even teach their kids that
lying is ok on the internet. Maybe this particular kid is a total outlier but
I can say for sure that my kids and their friends are definitely not ready for
any kind of sophisticated reasoning about when to apply which morals. At that
age they are also fairly unable to separate fact from ficition and news from
gossip.

The age limit of 13 seems pretty reasonable to me and if as a parent you think
your kid is so mature (hint: he isn't) then it is definitely your
responsibility to act as a guardian.

Google didn't make your son cry, you made your son cry. And that's fine, we
all make our kids cry from time to time. Explain the mistake you made to your
kid, figure out what to do in the future and move on.

~~~
Vivtek
Oh, come on. I have kids, too. When they were that old, I told them never to
sign up for anything without asking me, and I told them why we were lying
about their age and address, because there are people on the Internet who we
can't trust.

Now that they're older (my son is 12 now) and really do have the
sophistication to understand this distinction - and you're right, a 9yo or
11yo doesn't - they understand why we did that. But the key is, your 9yo and
11yo trust _you_ , and should continue to do so. They don't care what you
answer when signing them up for Google Mail - they don't even notice
discrepancies of that nature. In the case they do, you tell them why you're
doing it.

Google did most certainly make Alex cry - in exactly the same way that his
hard drive crashing would have done so. Sure, ultimately it's the parents'
fault, in a way, for letting him use fallible computer systems, and that in
itself is probably a good lesson, but Google most certainly shares the blame
here for boneheaded policies that don't even give parents the option of
interceding. And the reason is the same as Google's reason always is: it was
easier for Google.

~~~
zwieback
In other words you're acting as your son's guardian, which is exactly as it
should be.

The problem I have is with telling your kid: go ahead sign up and lie about
your age. There's a huge difference between the parent taking the step of
creating the account with a password known by the parent and telling the kid
to go ahead and lie, which is what a lot of (probably childless) commenters
suggest.

~~~
tripzilch
"You need to fill in an earlier year here, otherwise Google's computer will
think you're too young to use GMail [and might throw away your email at some
point]"

It's important to be clear that you're lying to a computer system, not another
human being.

------
mscarborough
I'm surprised at all the histrionics going on in the article and this thread.

"Google ... plans to cut him off from his family until he's 13."

First, take a deep breath. Then, get another email address that you can
control, and back it up. See if the grandparents still have copies of their
correspondence for the kid to read. Use this as an opportunity to teach the
importance of backing up data that is important to you, and why you can't
trust free online services to always look out for you.

Currently I'm in India, and today witnessed children sifting through open
piles of garbage and panhandling in the middle of traffic. So it's kind of
maddening to then witness the stunning lack of perspective these parents
demonstrate when their child is temporarily cut off from site update emails
and using chat to talk to them while sitting in the same room.

Yes, I understand the data loss making a 10 year old "enormously upset", but
if these seemingly technically-savvy parents didn't yet realize the necessity
of owning and managing data that is important to the family, then I'd hope
that point isn't lost. In the time spent to write a hysterical blog and more
responses in the comments, a simple solution to ensure this did not happen
again could have been implemented.

~~~
yhlasx
And i don't see the point for blaming Google, at all.

------
jdvolz
Am I the only person who thinks this is a great way to teach your son about
civil disobedience? It's clear this law, while well intended, isn't meant to
cover this specific situation. I would argue this type of civil disobedience
is the first step in getting the law changed (in this case, to something more
reasonable, or requiring that parental consent be available and expedient).

It's important for children to understand that laws aren't written in stone
and that if they dislike a law they can work to change it. Feeling helpless
and acting helpless isn't in the best interest of anyone's child or our
children's generation as a whole.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I think it's a horrible way to teach about civil disobedience.

The point of civil disobedience is to get the law changed. By quietly lying
about your age, you're doing the opposite, you're making it harder to get the
law changed. Civil disobedience is about adding friction to the system as an
incentive to change the law. By doing something nobody can notice you're
adding grease.

It's not civil disobedience if nobody notices what you're doing. It's not
civil disobedience if you aren't inconveniencing people in power.

By lying about your age, you're breaking the law purely for selfish benefit,
which is not the lesson a parent wants to teach a child.

Sacrificing himself by following the law, and spreading the story widely as
the author and his son have done will do much more to get the law changed.

~~~
edw
Thank you for your comment. People seem to have no idea what civil
disobedience is. In addition to the good points you made, I'd also like to
point out a couple things: First, this is not civil disobedience, it's
corporate disobedience. And second, people seem to have forgotten that civil
disobedience entails putting your ass on the line, in the form of publicly and
flagrantly breaking a law.

The point of civil disobedience is to appeal to people's consciences, to call
out a wrong far greater than your law-breaking, and to willingly open yourself
to prosecution in order to make that point. (That's why Anonymous isn't
committing civil disobedience until they turn themselves in and allow
themselves to be on trial in order to call attention to the unalloyed benefit
to society they seem to think they're providing.)

I don't see how Google's disallowing ten year olds to have Gmail accounts is a
wrong: it seems more like a simple business decision in the face of a law
that's designed to keep companies from preying on ten year olds by inundating
them with marketing.

We all know the poster's child is special, but for all of the kids who aren't
the offspring of übermenshen, this is a fight that maybe's not worth fighting.

~~~
Unseelie
My youngest brother is eight. Far from being the offspring of ubermenshen, he
suffers from a slew of learning disabilities inflicted on his brain by drug
use during pregnancy.

My brother doesn't type fast, he doesn't know how to code python. He does
immensely enjoy minecraft, and he does use google. Honestly, for him, the
ability to find something using google, going through the immensely difficult
task of correctly typing a search term and then parsing the search result is a
massive achievement.

All that said, to suggest that he shouldn't be allowed his gmail account,
given the immense amount of effort it took for him to learn to use it, is not
something I'm willing to stomach.

Its part of the internet, and he is well and truly a member of the internet
generation. Its something he should have every right to grow up immersed in.

That the internet is made of advertising is no reason to deny our children
access.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Yes, my daughter is too young to use Google. I will probably break the TOS and
allow her to use Google when it gets older. My point is that this isn't civil
disobedience or corporate disobedience, this is just me breaking the TOS. I'm
cool with that, but I'm not going to pretty it up and call it civil
disobedience.

------
ern
I think it's unfair that under 13s aren't allowed to use Gmail. But being able
to use email, code in Python and use Powerpoint, doesn't mean he has the
maturity to use social networking.

The internet is a cruel place, and hysteria about online predators aside, I
think that the biggest risk to kids is from their own peer group. I recently
encountered a fake profile on FB that was harassing high school kids,
including a cousin, by spreading rumours about them. The rumours seemed silly
to an adult, but the reactions of the victims on the perpetrator's wall were
telling: begging, swearing, threatening (incidentally, Facebook's abuse system
was pretty useless, I got the account killed because I figured out who the
bully probably was, and dropped a few not-so-subtle-hints threatening to
expose her). If teenagers are so distressed by online bullying, it would be
worse for pre-teens.

I have sympathy for Alex and his parents, but I don't blame the law for
blocking young children from accessing these services, especially social
networking sites.

~~~
mambodog
The issue is not with blocking access to Google+, it is with the (impending)
deletion of his ~2 years worth of emails. I don't believe you need to be 13
years old to use email, I know I was using it at around Alex's age.

~~~
chunky1994
True, however, I think google _can't_ do anything about it because of its TOS.

------
tybris
I think he learned a valuable lesson about how to use the Internet: lie about
everything.

~~~
muuh-gnu
And those parents seem to be beyond repair. They should be experienced enough
about life to not teach their son useless ivory-tower ethis like "dont lie".
He will find out about the power of lying sooner or later himself, and every
year he tries to abide by their logic, he will be hurt, lied to and deceived
by others who have mastered it before him. Depending on how much damage they
cause by such a nonsensical upbringing, he might end up hating them later. By
telling him to be the only one not to lie, they are basically lying to him
about how the "real world" works.

~~~
wollw
You don't have to lack ethics yourself to be unphased by others' lack of them.
I don't know if you're just trolling or something but I think this needs to be
addressed either way. Dishonesty has the distinct disadvantage of leaving you
with the need to maintain a fabrication; honesty has the huge advantage of
meaning you have _nothing to hide_. If you slip up your reputation is
tarnished and even if you don't you have to actually maintain the lie. If you
really believe the best way through life is to lie your way through it then I
really pity you.

~~~
Shenglong
Sometimes lying is necessary though. In this case for instance, while the real
solution would be to have Google's policy and the law changed, it's unlikely
that's going to happen for a ten year-old kid. My parents have always told me
to "pick your battles", and I think this is a clear example of a battle that's
easier won by lying.

Morality aside: maintaining a fabrication is also not difficult for some
people. You just need to make sure to think your lies through, and maintain
two levels of backup explanations in case someone does poke their way through.
Weaving details through primary and backup explanations can be difficult, but
that's where practice comes in.

------
dexen
Why is that parents can't give consent to their young (<13y/o) child using
Google account?

Parent logs into his/her account, parent creates kid's account, parent states
real age (10 years), parent expresses consent, child uses the new account. Is
it that complex?

~~~
muuh-gnu
> Parent logs into his/her account, parent creates kid's account, parent
> states real age (10 years), parent expresses consent,

How do you prove that it's the kids parent thats giving this permission and
not a random adult the kid asked to pretend being his parent?

> Why is that parents can't give consent to their young (<13y/o) child using
> Google account?

Because the parents probably have to provide written proof and it costs Google
money to process such non-automated requests. You basically have millions of
children below the age of 13. If everybody wanted to sign up their kids,
Google would have to hire people to do nothing else than to just process the
written or faxed permissions. Its way easier and cheaper to just exclude
pre-13s from the service.

~~~
Vivtek
How does every other freaking kids' site do this? You're telling me Google is
incapable of figuring that out?

The only evidence they have he's less than 13 is his honest answer to their
question. The only evidence the law holds them to is billing the parents a
dollar, or really, just the assertion that they're an adult. Microsoft manages
this for their online properties. Why can't Google? Because Google doesn't
care to.

~~~
jasonlotito
> How does every other freaking kids' site do this?

They generally get fined.

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

This is the law.

------
ComputerGuru
COPPA gives an (easy?) way out - the parents just have to fax in their consent
for their underage son to use their service. There is no law stopping the kid,
Google probably just doesn't want to be inundated with such requests.

~~~
lambda
Fax? Easy? So now you need to go through some pointless, antiquated charade
just to indicate that you consent to let your kids use the service? It would
cost far more to have someone looking at the faxes and correlating them with
the appropriate accounts than they gain by allowing minors to use their site.
Google is not a charity; COPPA has made it far to expensive to bother keeping
profiles for minors, so they just ban it, like just about every other
significant online service.

~~~
pygy_
The relevant information could easily be OCRed from the faxes (even more if
they provide a standard form), only requiring a one click human validation.

------
neworbit
Yeah, Google's pretty much required to do this by US law though (the
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) - I'll leave the "think of the
children" jokes to other folks.

~~~
sp332
But COPPA is a US law. There's no reason to enforce it on a kid who lives near
Amsterdam.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Google's already giving you a free service. Why should Google go through all
that paperwork because you didn't read or comply with their Terms of Service?
These people need to suck it up and find another way for their kid to talk to
his grandparents.

~~~
sp332
The main complaint of the article is that most social networks have US-centric
TOS. It's not just about finding a different provider, it's that they might
not be able to find a social network that doesn't enforce COPPA
internationally.

~~~
epochwolf
Given that the data is probably stored in the US, COPPA would probably apply
to any data collected outside of the US.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Actually COPPA only applies to subjects who live in the U.S., so his point is
a fair one. Even so, according to Wikipedia it requires a large amount of
paperwork. Although I agree developers have a responsibility to be aware of
this, I think these parents have a greater responsibility not to pass this
attitude on to the next generation.

~~~
epochwolf
The law applies to entities with any commercial presence in the US collecting
any personal information from children. It makes no distinction where the
children are located or where the data is stored.

<http://www.ftc.gov/ogc/coppa1.htm>

------
sltkr
I hate to be that guy that links to xkcd comics, but here it goes anyway:
<http://xkcd.com/743/>

Google is under no obligation to allow 13-year-olds on their service anyway,
and I'm sure the age limit comes from legal restrictions, not just ageism on
Google's part.

Fortunately, e-mail is already an open protocol, and you can get a working
e-mail address anywhere. I understand the attraction of Gmail (it's free,
user-friendly and offers a lot of storage) but it comes with some conditions;
that's part of the deal.

------
brudgers
I will agree that children under 13 are perfectly capable of using email
safely with adult supervision.

However, the circumstances involved show why 13 years of age may be considered
a reasonable minimum age for using Google's services, because the incident
which sparked the account being locked was a 10 year old signing up for a
social network designed with the assumption that its users would be capable of
make sophisticated decisions regarding privacy and be reasonably able to
detect ill intent or predatory behavior in an online environment.

While I can understand that the motives which led to the creation of the
original email account were based on sound parenting and offered clear
benefits for a child, it is hard to imagine sound rationales for giving a 10
year old unfettered access to a social network.

From email to social network there is a quantum leap in the level of
sophistication required to safely navigate the service and I see Google's
stance as not only justified but reasonable. The argument that it is ok to lie
about one's age breaks pretty quickly - very few people are comfortable with
12 year old girls telling grown men they are 18.

------
corin_
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the under 13 law (in US and some other places, or
"policy" rather than law for Google internationally) is only without a
guardian's permission, so if a letter was written on behalf of him, they would
reactivate it?

Well, certainly that's the case with the law - as to Google policy, that's
where you should correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit, on a side note, if the author is the poster here (or reads HN either
way): I really like your writing. The story itself normally wouldn't make me
care a huge amount (a short version is "a ten year old can't use a 13 and over
service"), but I actually found myself really empathising and feeling upset on
his behalf.

~~~
masklinn
> so if a letter was written on behalf of him, they would reactivate it?

Question is: written to whom? What is the channel for that?

There seems to be none. No way to explain and no recourse. And that's why we
can't have nice things.

~~~
cageface
You can have _free_ email because Google doesn't have to pay people to
manually process and evaluate these kinds of requests. Ignorant, self-serving
politicians and their sheepish, easily manipulated constituents are the reason
we can't have nice things.

------
ck2
Valuable lessons to teach about backups and maybe not putting data into the
cloud that can be local.

My 2012 project is going to be to quit gmail somehow and get back to imap with
local storage.

Why not buy the kid his own domain name and teach him how to set it up and use
a local email program (Thunderbird?)

~~~
troels
While that might be the answer for you, it's not a usable solution for me and
I guess for most people. Having my mail available from everywhere is an
important feature. I guess I could set up my own webmail, but I'll be hard
pressed to find something that matches the quality of gmail. Oh well, it's not
like RMS didn't warn us ...

~~~
Silhouette
You make a good point, but I wonder how quickly a suitable solution would
evolve if we could kill the momentum of services like Google Mail a bit.

The tools to do local mail hosting, IMAP, webmail, etc. all exist. From
personal experience, configuring them is a pain in the backside if you're not
an experienced sysadmin, which of course includes almost everyone. If that
could be overcome, the tech is there.

As for hosting, there are various blog platforms where you have a choice
between hosting the code yourself, either on your own machine or on a system
included with your personal ISP account, or using a site such as wordpress.com
where they do the maintenance and in some cases charge money for extras but
the software and data formats are basically the same. I see no reason a
similar model couldn't work for e-mail, and if a particular e-mail platform
started to take off, there is no reason for ISPs not to support it locally;
most of them have always offered some sort of included e-mail mailbox and
webmail facility anyway, just not of the calibre of Google Mail and not
necessarily easily compatible with other systems.

Basically, I think the problems with a better solution that doesn't leave you
at the mercy of a big organisation like Google are genuine but not
insurmountable. It's more about usability and standardisation/interoperability
than about technical issues.

------
w1ntermute
Who gives their real DOB when registering for a website? I've been using
January 1st, 1975 as my birthday ever since I started using the internet.

~~~
darklajid
Right. We're talking about a social network here, where other people are
interacting with you based on the data you entered. Sure, you can fake your
birthday (and interests, gender etc..), but if you do this you're either not
grasping the idea of these social networks or you're creating one of these
'I'm just in to snoop on people I know' account.

So I certainly think it makes sense to give out real data, iff you plan to use
the service as intended.

That said, the bigger problem is that Google happily accepted his date of
birth in Google+, added it to the Google account and afterwards locked him out
of every Google service. That's crap. And it just proves once more how Google
aggregates all the data about you. If I fill in an innocent field on a 'fun'
service, should it really have consequences for (or even be connected to) my
main online identity?

~~~
Jach
I can't speak on how social media is supposed to be used (since I don't even
have a facebook account), but wouldn't the kid mostly be in contact with
people who know him or her outside of the computer (such as friends and
family), making the "displayed age" (you can turn the display off, right?)
useless? Faking a birthday seems pretty harmless and I don't see how it would
hinder your experience on anything unless you enter the wrong age that gets
you banned like this instance. When I was in my early teens I role played on a
game and met a lot of people there I'm still in contact with, I interacted
with 20+ year olds when I was 13 and there were a few younger people too.

Of course, I didn't fake my interests/gender/etc. but I've never been in the
habit of storing age/location info with a private service; it's available
publicly anyway, but you have to use inductive reasoning to link the data. If
you want people to know your birthday, I don't see why you can't just tell
them in person or email or whatever and leave the "official" fake birthday
what it is.

~~~
FaceKicker
I don't know about you, but the only way I know anyone's birthday outside of
my immediate family and girlfriend is via Facebook.

This could be fixed by using the correct date but putting an earlier year.

------
petewailes
This also surely means that the Dear Sophie video shouldn't be possible, as
the kid, having just been born is thus under 13.

Link for those who don't know what I'm on about:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk>

------
csomar
This is why I'm going to setup my own mail server. I don't want to wake up
some days and find out that all my emails where deleted or locked because of
_any_ stupid or not stupid reason. Emails are quite important. They hold very
important/confidential information. Your email is also the key to remember
forgotten passwords, your conversations with clients, and many other things.

I have purchased the cheapest Linode VPS for this particular reason. I tried
Live Mail (the Windows Application) with IMAP and it's really cool. The editor
is also better than the Gmail one. I'll miss some features, but it's okay.

Seriously, if you don't want to get hurt, get a VPS or a dedicated. It's not
expensive. You host your emails, websites, repositories and everything. You do
scheduled backups to Amazon S3 and you are just fine.

I'm going to write about how awesome a dedicated server is, once I complete
setting up my server and create my blog.

~~~
vacri
That might be a little on the difficult side for a 10-year-old to set up.

~~~
csomar
Yes. Unless his father did it for him, this needs lot of technical knowledge.
However, I'm targeting the HN audience with my comment.

------
raganesh
Google recently ran the "Dear Sophie" commercial. The core theme of the
commercial is against Google's ToS.

TechCrunch article on the same along with Google's BS response:
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/09/attention-dear-sophie-
inspi...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/09/attention-dear-sophie-inspired-
parents-you-cant-actually-create-a-google-account-for-your-kid/)

------
chrisbuc
Interestingly, I've just taken a look at the gmail signup process, and the
birthdate field appears when I select location "US" but not when you select
"UK"

I'm sure I remember seeing an google advert recently (in the UK) where a
father sends emails to his child over several years for the child to receive
when they're old enough to use email - and I'm sure the child's email was a
gmail account (I may be mistaken, though).

~~~
chrisbuc
Aa ha- petewailes (above) just posted a link to the advert I remember seeing:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2726225>

------
savramescu
This is most likely an automated trigger that blocked & scheduled for deletion
that account. Even for a company as big as Google it's impossible to have
these type of things reviewed by humans. What I do hope is that they'll create
a channel for complaints if the user should want to. What I don't understand
is the way the parent behaves. He knows he's in the wrong and he still feels
outraged because Google blocked the e-mail. Even though nobody reads the ToS
it doesn't mean that they are moot. Google didn't make his son cry, his father
did.

~~~
speleding
IANAL, but the TOS is probably moot in the country where he is from (the
Netherlands), so he is not in the wrong. Dutch law has several requirements
for a TOS to be valid and simply clicking "I agree" is not enough.

~~~
savramescu
But isn't Google subject to American laws, being an American based company?
I'm just asking, I don't have experience in these type of legal matters, but
it seems to me that they are supposed to do that.

~~~
aidenn0
The Netherlands will say it's subject to the Netherlands' laws, and the US
will say it's subject to US law. What actually gets enforced is a matter of
diplomacy.

------
flocial
I think a lot of people are missing a more important discussion. Should Google
be allowed to cross-check a customer's data across all their services? Think
about it. If you or your company uses Google Apps, you have Gmail, Youtube,
adSense, Ad Mob, and accounts on a bunch of other services that got bought,
they know what you search for, and now they even have an approximation of your
social graph with Google+ (although it's not much different from your Google
contacts).

Banks are regulated by laws that restrict certain arms of their businesses
from collaborating too closely (particularly sharing financial information)
and I don't think Google should be any different). Was it ok for Google to
associate the information entered in a Google profile to shut down his child's
email?

The problem with this system is that honest people are penalized and liars are
not punished. Regardless of how this man handles the situation, that is not
something I would like to face as a parent, to have my child punished for
being honest and having to choose between social justice through lying (the
child clearly has parent supervision and approval) and letting the child
become embittered for losing a significant part of their digital identity (I'd
recommend using offlineimap next time though).

------
beaumartinez
Can he not request his mail over POP3 or IMAP and store it locally? Or is his
login terminally locked?

What an appalling user experience—and on so many levels. It should have at
least warned him that by setting _his_ age he was in violation of the TOS.

~~~
someone13
This is actually my first thought too, but apparently it's completely locked
out. See:

[http://www.sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-
made...](http://www.sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-son-
cry.html#comment-122527)

------
pathik
What's the big deal? Google is required by law to do that. Enter a fake birth
date.

~~~
darklajid
The fact is, he didn't need to enter a birth date. GMail didn't ask for one.
Youtube did. So he only had a GMail account.

He joined Google+ and _could_ optionally add a day of birth, because - well.
You want your friends in a social network to post 'All the best' or whatever.
So he provided this option freely, to share it with his circles of friends.

Not to link it to his main online identity. I don't think that it is obvious
that there's a neat 'Hah! Another one entered his DOB in Google+ and is < 13,
let's shut him out' trigger.

~~~
mechanical_fish
And here we have illustration #447 of why people who aren't database
administrators neither need nor want universal identity. Gmail did not have to
know this kid was a kid. But it spied on his social network and now it knows.

A human exhibiting this same behavior - peeking in his or her customers'
windows to see if they're technically violating terms of service in their
private lives - would have been called a nosy busybody.

This is a major reason to avoid Google services. They are learning to better
_simulate_ a company that cares about privacy, but it's all still Big Brother
at the back end.

~~~
Vivtek
That's the most cogent point I've seen in this entire debate.

~~~
DiabloD3
Except it blames Google for being Big Brother instead of blaming Congress for
forcing Google to be Big Brother on behalf of the Government.

~~~
Vivtek
Well. True. But as I've said elsewhere in the thread, Microsoft seems capable
of handling COPPA just fine with minimal bother, and Google really doesn't
give a shit if you're left without recourse.

------
defdac
This got me thinking. Are there an equivalent of streetsmart on the web -
"websmart"? I can't see trace of it in this kids parents or the kid himself.
Isn't this sort of useless restriction the first thing you learn to circumvent
when you enter the web? It's a web page/service for god sake, not a life
threatening mechanical contraption that might chop your head of if used
improperly.

------
Joakal
Puzzle Pirates handles this better by freezing the game account until the user
reaches the estimate legal age.

Avoids COPPA hassles and issues with deletion.

~~~
OstiaAntica
They are still violating COPPA. They can't knowingly store child's information
without parental permission.

Note: I worked on this issue for a Fortune 100 company when COPPA was passed.

------
willvarfar
I hope the googlers who browse here will be able to sort out a special mail-
log as a parting gift

~~~
CWIZO
I hope the googlers here will stop the "impending doom of deletion" or delay
it, so he has enough time to sort this out.

~~~
ralfd
I hope the googlers here will enable G+ for me instead of giving it to 10 year
olds. I have grown up for _nothing_.

------
scotty79
He forgot to teach his kid important lesson.

On the internet you can and should lie, cheat and steal, just don't harm real
people.

------
blahedo
I'm surprised at how many people in this thread are focusing on the "Google
locked the account" as the bad part of this. The clear fuck-up on Google's
part is rather that they didn't provide any avenue for Alex's parents to
accept the contract on his behalf.

Nobody would be complaining (other than the usual light grumbling) if the
lockout message had been something like this: "Parent permission required! Our
records show that you are not yet 13, so we have blocked access to your
account. To restore access: If you _are_ at least 13, click here to send proof
of that. If you are under 13, have a parent or guardian click here to link
your account to theirs and accept the terms of service on your behalf."

------
michaelschade
What would be really awesome of Google to do then is, if they do lock an
account out due to an age-based TOS violation, still provide access to Google
Takeout (and add Gmail to the supported services list) so the kid could at
least easily get his data back.

IANAL, so I don't know if he technically would not be allowed to access Google
Takeout either via the TOS, but if Google's lawyers could incorporate an
exception of some sort for age-based violations, then this would at least be a
super nice thing for them to do.

------
motters
Well, when you live inside of a walled garden the proprietor can kick you, or
your son, off the grass for any ephemeral or arbitrary reason they happen to
have just thought of.

------
SMrF
It boggles the mind that this was actually implemented. Some poor schmuck had
to sit there and write the code to delete little kid's emails.

------
TorKlingberg
A scary thing is, if I signed up for Google+ and accidentally chose 2000 as my
birth year, my Google account would have been locked. That includes Gmail,
Google Apps, Google Code and probably Android. I guess making phone calls
would still work, but who knows in a future when we all use IP telephony.

------
metaprinter
On the internet, I was born in 1901.

------
tobylane
I was expecting that the child searched some odd word combination that is some
horrible (yet brilliant) internet meme like rule 34 or jailbait. This is
comparatively boring, COPPA faxes?

------
coffie6423
I have been playing with computers ever since I remember. My first CPU was 8
bit. At that point I was 7. I have not stopped my obsession with it. In the
meantime, before I reached 18, I had disregarded laws that will not allow me
to access sites.

I have not paid much attention to these laws. Thinking back, though, I think I
should not have been spending too much time playing around on computers, but
enjoying playing outside.

------
Poiesis
Is it a TOS violation for someone else to use your account? Adult signs up,
kid uses account. Seemingly all perfectly legal, right?

------
dholowiski
Should have gotten him his own domain name (through someone other than google)
and used backupify to back up his email. Then when google decides to shut you
down, you still own your identity, and your data. Actually this applies for
everybody, under or over 13.

~~~
jarek
Or used any other method to back-up your personal data...

------
SoftwareMaven
I wonder if Google was headquartered in Utah, where the number of engineers
with kids would undoubtably be MUCH higher, if this would be a solved problem
already. The law certainly has ways of letting under 13 onto the web, just ask
Disney.

------
tommi
It's a sensational story about the required 13 years of age to use the
services.

------
dendory
He could take that as a challenge and learn to buy his own domain, build his
own site, install his own webmail system. That way he will never have to worry
about a cloud service shutting him down.

------
dev1n
if lulz security ever takes down another organization please let it be google.
They need to learn that taking people's data is not something individuals will
take lightly, nor should it be included in a bloody ToS. Nor should there be
any reason why the boy's parents couldn't sign off on the contract as his
legal guardians on the internet, as they are in real life. Google does not
need to keep a 10 year old's email's to his grandparents because of a ToS
breach. big impersonal corporations FTL.

------
woodall
Just a suggestion, pretty sure it won't work, but has the author tried
downloading the messages using IMAP or POP?

Other than that, it really does suck but it's not a quick or easy fix.

------
dkarl
Sheesh, teach him about appropriate times to lie, already. You shouldn't tell
anyone on the internet you're under eighteen unless you're signing up for
summer camp.

------
GFischer
The author made a followup post here:

[http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013103.html#56...](http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/013103.html#563511)

This is what it says:

"Hey ho. Commenting here because I feel chased out of my own blog. I'm trying
to figure out if I want to write a follow-up blog post, and if so, what I
would write in it. More importantly, who would I be writing it for? There may
be some catharsis for me in writing a response, but it would also involve me
stewing in asshat soup for even longer while I composed it.

The main thing I would want to clarify is that the technical problems are not
actually the heart of the matter for me. Being responsible parents, we set
Alex's email up in such a way that we get copies of all his incoming messages.
We can probably reconstruct large chunks of his correspondence to date. I'm
not even sure if Alex thinks of email as a long-term thing, though. He
archives messages, but I don't know if he considers them anything other than
ephemeral.

Secondly, we can set him up with a new email account somewhere else. No
problem. Offline, IMAP, webmail, whatever. That's easy. (Although I would very
much prefer not to have to run my own email server, in the same way that I
prefer not to fix the engine of my own car.) Alternatively, we can just do
what everyone else does, and simply lie. It wouldn't be the first time, and it
won't be the last. (#include relevant discussions of "legal" vs. "moral".)

What really made me angry was the emotional harm. I don't like using that
phrase, because for me it brings to mind stereotypical unreasonable lawsuits,
but that's what it is. An authority figure in Alex's life turned round and
damn near bit his hand off, when Alex thought he was following that figure's
instructions. It feels like a violation of trust. No matter whether we get his
old email back, the original violation remains. Hence the title of my post:
Google made my son cry. When you hurt my kid, I get angry.

I completely understand that Google's hands are tied because of COPPA. As soon
as they knew that Alex was younger than 13, they had to act, and they can't
"un-know" that information. My instinct says that this is an unintended
consequence, though. I find it hard to imagine that "weeding out underage
Gmail users" was listed as a goal on the G+ rollout plan.

What would make me happy, as a parent (first of all) and as an interaction
designer (because I find it hard to leave the professional side behind)? What
would make this right?

* If 13 is the hard age limit for using Gmail, Google should ask for your age when you sign up for a Gmail account. That way, you know in advance you're going to have to lie, rather than having the truth come up and bite you in the ass two years later.

* Instead of the harsh, default TOS violation message, a sympathetic and apologetic error message tuned for the specific circumstance of discovering that you are too young to use the service. Think about it. In this specific case, what do you know about the user? You know that they're a child. Design for this. Error messages are bad enough for grown-ups; they're double-bad for kids.

* The option to retrieve Alex's old email, instead of just discarding it.

* The option for us to give parental consent for Alex to have a Gmail account. I love Gmail. I would much rather Alex had a Gmail account than that we have to arse about with Thunderbird and our own IMAP server.

* Even if there is nothing they can do, an apology would be nice. Just because they're legally in the right, doesn't mean that they feel good about it. Show this."

------
dschobel
Great headline, total non-story. It'll be interesting to see how high this one
goes on HN...

------
felipeoc
In Brazil every kid knows how to lie the date of birth in order to create an
Orkut account.

------
wnoise
Minors: the last minority it's still okay (and legally mandated) to
discriminate against.

------
thricedotted
I was 10 when COPPA first came into effect, but even before that I never put
my actual age/birthday into accounts I registered, and if it was an email
service that required an "actual" name from me, I always used some silly
pseudonym. All this so I could play Scrabble, chess, and Battlefield with
strangers on various websites, email my fourth grade teacher, make a Homestead
chatroom, and tell the internet how much I loved SpongeBob SquarePants. Until
I turned 13, I never batted an eyelash about lying about my age on the
internet -- it was simply something I thought I was expected to do, not
because I thought the government wanted to keep me off the internet (which
they did, but my parents didn't, so whatever), but because if everybody at
least _pretended_ to be over 13, then those under 13 might be safer. My
offline and online identities didn't merge until I was 17 or 18...at about the
time Facebook started picking up speed.

Now, I don't think that's the right mentality to have, and it's based on false
logic since being a teen still makes you prey on the internet, but it's the
mentality that was imbued in me as a person who started using the internet
pre-COPPA restrictions and, more importantly, pre-Facebook -- in an age when
people weren't EXPECTED to have their offline identities connected to their
online ones. Especially children.

His parents obviously knew about COPPA restrictions due to the YouTube account
business, although I'm still confused as to why he wasn't asked for his
age/birthdate on the Gmail registration page. No, their son shouldn't have put
his age into Google+, especially if he already know that he couldn't use it to
create a YouTube account; yes, Google should at least allow data export for
the account (although they are by no means obligated to) and/or provide a
streamlined process for parents to authorize the accounts of any users under
13. I remember GameFAQs reacted to COPPA by locking the account of any user
under 13 until their 13th birthday -- this would be more reasonable to me, but
it sounds like the personal data storage issue gets in the way of that.

Anyway, to me, the more interesting thing is that this post made me realize
that I came "of age" (i.e., reached a point where I would be considered
something of an adult rather than a complete child) at the same time the
internet identity paradigm shifted from relative anonymity and "alter egos" to
something much more closely interconnected to a person's real life. And so I
wonder: if Alex had been born in 1991 rather than 2001, would this have
happened with the theoretical Hotmail account he might have had? No, I think,
because once upon a time, it was pretty much expected that a person would not
be who they said they were on the internet -- and that was absolutely fine.
And even moreso, back in the days when you COULD be a child on the internet, I
don't think most children wanted to be known AS CHILDREN. Because seriously,
who the heck wants to play Scrabble with an 8-year-old kid?

So, I guess as a kid who grew up before social networking became big, I still
think kids are better off lying about their ages anyway. Those who know them
in real life will understand that they're circumventing COPPA, and those who
don't will possibly be less prone to being creepy/condescending/what-have-you.
While I'm sure that this can be interpreted as victim blaming and everybody
should have a right to feel safe on the internet while using their true
identity, COPPA serves as something as an arbitrary age of consent, since
10-year-olds could unwittingly provide information that gets them kidnapped,
just as 15-year-olds can unwittingly make babies. But if you're a 10-year-old
who's mature enough to be conscious about privacy, or a 15-year-old who's
mature enough to know about safe sex and birth control, then have at it, I
say. The system is there to protect, but if you're not in need of the system's
protection, then go ahead and circumvent it.

tldr, sorry your son cried, but it would have been easy enough to prevent, and
pretty much the expected thing to do during the pre-social networking era.

------
publicplanking
First World Problems

------
yawniek
backups, backups,backups...

he could start writing the book:

learn backups the hard way

------
VladRussian
this is one of the reasons you never enter real data into online services

------
Iv
Am I an asshole if my first thought was "that's what you get by putting your
data in the cloud" ?

------
yanw
Your son joined a service he wasn't supposed to, then joined an adjacent
service that still requires an invite and that triggered a mechanism that
kicked him out and he gets upset, you evidently don't think it's your fault
for not reading the TOS and not being familiar with the american COPPA law and
you think it's Google's fault.

Congratulations on proving that link-baiting works very well even on HN.

~~~
sp332
Why would anyone living in the Netherlands know or care about COPPA? And why
would Google enforce COPPA compliance internationally? That seems like a waste
of resources, not to mention limiting their audience.

~~~
sheffield
_why would Google enforce COPPA compliance internationally?_

Because it's Google (an American company) who have to comply with COPPA and
not some children (of any nationality).

------
maeon3
You are exposing the kid to adult problems, and expecting an infant to behave
in in a legal and socially acceptable manner. I'm not saying not to let the
kid on the internet, I'm saying that this needs to be an educational
experience for a kid, not a situation where we all complain about regrettable
situations.

Why don't we let kids drive cars? All the kid has to do is lie on the form
when taking the drivers test.

~~~
sofal
_Why don't we let kids drive cars?_

Because they could _kill_ other people with them? I don't know, what do you
think? I guess that's just like email, right?

~~~
maeon3
We don't let kids drive cars because they will hurt themselves and hurt
others. The fact that not being able to drive a car makes a child cry is not
an argument that the child should have lied on the drivers test so he could.

Children need to be trained in the way they should interact with the world,
not let loosed to figure out how to do whatever they want to do however they
want. The parents need a way to train the kid in the proper use of this tool.
The internet is not for young children. It is an extremely powerful tool that
you can hurt yourself and others with.

We also don't let children travel the world alone to unknown places, visiting
and interacting with unknown people. Why not? Because the kids will get into
trouble and harm themselves and the parents will be oblivious.

------
stallker
Al giorno d'oggi i servizi di hosting costano veramente poco, così se qualcuno
mi chiede di consigliargli un buon servizio di posta elettronica (gmail,
hotmail, ...) io consiglio di registrarsi un dominio e di attivarsi le proprie
caselle di posta, gestendole in quasi completa libertà, invece di sottostare
ai capricci delle aziende 'che non vogliono essere il male'. Mi ricordo ancora
oggi del mio account @mac.com che doveva restare gratuito per sempre... e poi
per potere accedere mi chiesero di pagare (e ancora peggio di possedere una
carta di credito... ai tempi le prepagate non esistevano ancora). Scusate se
scrivo in italiano... se in qualche modo questo commento può essere utile (e
cioè se vedrò un paio di punti assegnati) cercherò di tradurlo al meglio :)

edit: thanks to Vivtek for translation :)

~~~
Vivtek
_Hosting services today really don't cost much, so if anybody asks me to
recommend a good email service (gmail, hotmail) I recommend registering a
domain and setting up their own mailbox, providing complete freedom, instead
of subjecting themselves to the caprices of the company "that doesn't want to
do evil". I still remember my @mac.com account that was supposed to stay free
forever - and then I had to pay to access it (and also had to have a credit
card - at the time, prepaid cards didn't exist). Sorry for writing in Italian,
if this comment could be useful in any way (and if I see some points) I'll try
to translate it better :)_

There. Fixed that for you. Thanks for making the day a little more
interesting.

------
RyanKearney
ABC Liquor made my son cry when they denied him the sale of alcohol at the age
of 8.

No, seriously, there's an age limit that he agreed to when he signed up.

~~~
nealb
The limit is still unreasonable and the support procedure for solving the
problem is terrible.

~~~
RyanKearney
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protec...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childrens_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act)

It's a law.

------
jpr
Yay, let's link every service ever together, what could possibly go wrong!

------
gaetanomarano
[ goopl.us ] millions people will cry due to Google \-- \--

------
dstein
Orwell would have called this situation getting "ungoogled".

------
svankie
I think -and with all due respect to you, and your son-... this is extremely
exaggerated.

------
goombastic
A minor is not likely to have immediate spending power, only influence. Google
is in the business of making sellers meet buyers. No matter how hard we look
at this, that's the fundamental nature of "the Google." It is probable that
Google's segmentation of the market shows most minors as being engaged best
via TV.

Most of us tend to forget that we are the product that Google is marketing.

~~~
goombastic
What's with the downvotes? This is the truth, your data is the only thing
important to Google.

------
jellicle
ATTENTION GOOGLE:

REGARDLESS of what you think you need to do to comply with COPPA or any other
law in the United States or any other jurisdiction;

IF you have automated processes that cancel accounts and freeze data and do
not offer at a minimum, an opportunity for the person affected to retrieve
his/her data entrusted with you;

THEN, this will keep happening (Google-made-me-cry stories).

THEREFORE, in order to reduce the number of Google-made-me-cry stories, you
should:

IMPLEMENT a system to allowed users adversely affected by your automated
processes a way to RETRIEVE their data, all the time, no matter what, come
hell or high water.

IN FACT the account_delete() function shouldn't even take an ARGUMENT about
whether to allow data retrieval; account_delete() should have a non-
overridable call to allow_account_export_for_thirty_days(), if you KNOW WHAT I
MEAN, which I nearly think that you DO.

BECAUSE this isn't rocket surgery.

AND BECAUSE we get upset if we lose our data. We become WROTH. You wouldn't
like us when we are WROTH.

IT is the LEAST you could do. Seriously, it's the minimum. The absolute least.
You could do more, if you wanted to. But this is the least.

SINCERELY, The Internet.

~~~
OstiaAntica
Under COPPA, once Google realizes the data is a child's personal information,
they have to immediately delete the account.

~~~
jellicle
Your statement is not true. In fact Google's only obligation under the law is
not to make PUBLICLY available children's personal information without
parental consent, and not to continue to collect personal information from a
verified child without parental consent.

There's even a specific safe harbor for Google to disclose a child's personal
information to the child's parent.

~~~
OstiaAntica
No, you don't know what you are talking about. I ran the COPPA compliance for
a Fortune 100 company when the law was passed. There is no public/private
distinction in the law.

"The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and Rule apply to individually
identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full
name, home address, email address, telephone number or any other information
that would allow someone to identify or contact the child."

<http://www.coppa.org/comply.htm>

