Worth noting that this is the statement of a "product expert" which is just some random person not an employee of the company our the actual policy. This might be true but this isn't a reliable source.
Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
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Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#22It's sad but because of stuff like this I setup accounts for my kids to register for games or whatever and always set them up as adults. I don't have time to deal with their accounts getting locked and so on, even if there are other issues. Granted they also don't get free reign on the internet / outside parental view anyhow.
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Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#23I've been banned-for-life from a handful of services after I lied about my age as a kid.
I can see both (all?) sides of this:
- As a society we ought to be forgiving of harmless youthful indiscretions
- As a business you shouldn't have to give second chances to people who blatantly defraud you
- There is a big can of worms when it comes to doing business with minors on the internet. I don't think there's a solution as easy as "well when they're 18, let them log into their account and update their age to acknowledge that they were using the service as a minor" or "just let people open multiple accounts (with wildly different ages) under their name."
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's very unwise to lie to a service provider when they explicitly ask, especially when setting up an account where money will change hands. That is technically actual fraud. Google's not gating out under-18-year-olds for fun: they're a business, they'd love to make more money. Contract law in the US forbids people under 18 from entering into broad categories of contract, and Adsense use operates under electronic con…
All minors set up a Youtube channel at one point and a lot of them use Adsense.
Do you mean use Adsense as per policy (by linking the account of someone over 18) or do you mean lie to Google?
The latter might be true, but every time Google becomes aware of it they will cancel that account as quickly as they can.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#25I’ve never used AdSense, so might be a stupid question, but how do they identify you? Are you supposed to give them some lifetime identifying information like SSN? Everything else like email, name, address can be changed.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is ultimately subject to the laws of the US where it's 18 at the federal level. It also doesn't really matter: if the policy says 18, it's 18.
Google is subject to the laws of every jurisdiction in which Google operates. Furthermore US law doesn't actually require Google to refuse to do business with minors. So if a jurisdiction had some rule that was contradictory to Google's policy (which I doubt), then Google would have to comply.
I suspect the difficulty is that it's legally difficult to enforce contracts with minors. Easier to just refuse to deal with them.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#27I wanted to comment on the parent thread but it’s already locked.
“Cannot the boy withhold payment until he turns 18 years? He will lose it to inflation and all but at least he will get some due, right?”
It’s a little weird not being able to suggest a solution when my whole life runs on Adsense money.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#28As someone who operated on the "adult internet" with payment processors and related infrastructure without being 18, I still carry forward the constant fear that I'll be banned for retroactive Terms of Service violations incurred when I was a kid. It really sucks when it's services like AdSense because you're just screwed forever. I really really wish the internet was more supportive of "early hackers" who want to ex…
> if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done
My mom definitely wouldn’t be able to provide informed consent to half the stuff I was doing on the internet in high school and middle school even if I told her about it.
She worried, I’m sure, but between speaking next to zero english and the novelty of www in the early 00’s, best she could do was threaten to take the computer if things got too weird.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it is very unwise to use any Google product or service for any business purpose.
It's very unwise to lie to a service provider when they explicitly ask, especially when setting up an account where money will change hands. That is technically actual fraud. Google's not gating out under-18-year-olds for fun: they're a business, they'd love to make more money. Contract law in the US forbids people under 18 from entering into broad categories of contract, and Adsense use operates under electronic con…
> Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
What liability is that? Genuinely asking because I've never heard that concern.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#30A 13-year-old boy sets up Adsense for his Youtube channel and his father is told that his son is now banned from Adsense/Admob for a lifetime. This is what you get when you have no humans in the loop.
What would having a human in the loop accomplish in this case? Doesn't strike me as the poster child of a massive injustice
Got banned from Amazon on my first purchase. For some reason the payment bounced even though everything should have been fine (correct payment details, enough money in the account etc).
Complained and got unbanned.
AWS has even a notary(!) based process to recover accounts.
It is pretty normal to recover bad things on non-Google sites by getting a human into the loop, especially if money is involved.