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Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

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Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#101

Post by pjscott »

DuncanIdaho wrote: post #94
quanticle wrote: post #7

To be honest, I think a large part of the blame goes to COPPA. I remember listening on those hearings, and those opposed to COPPA warned against this exact thing happening. They said that taking the decision away from parents would lead to disaster, and guess what, it has . Rather than blaming Google here, shouldn't we be writing our legislators to repeal COPPA? We should be telling them that this misguided law is st…

It really feels like stone age. There are 13 year old kids out there who can write a web and mail server, yet could get into trouble for using them.

In a way, this is a useful life lesson: sometimes the most reasonable thing to do is to lie to unreasonable institutions.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#102

Post by pjscott »

sigmaxipi wrote: post #72

There is an interesting rule in COPPA that is the cause of this bad experience: http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm#teen For sites that choose to age-screen, age information should be asked in a way that does not invite falsification. See Question 39, below. In addition, we recommend that sites that choose to age-screen employ temporary or permanent cookies to prevent children from back-buttoning to change thei…

Does COPPA think that children were born yesterday? Who would keep falling for the old "what year were you born?" age-verification trick?

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#103

Post by sp332 »

Kylekramer wrote: post #40
danilocampos wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to believe the ad wasn't titled "Dear Sophie's Account Held by Myself, Her Father, Not to be Handed Over to Sophie until such time as she meets Google's User Age Threshold for Regulatory Compliance." "Dear Sophie" does have a much nicer ring to it, I guess.

"Dear Sophie" pretty clearly implies it isn't Sophie's account to me. When you write an letter (especially one that hasn't been sent yet as the commercial implies), you are the owner of the letter, right? To cite the Bible, it is Paul's letters to the Corinthians, not the Corinthians' letters from Paul.

"Dear Sophie" implies that she will be reading the email. Which means she has an email address.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#104

Post by pjscott »

shinratdr wrote: post #44
Tangaroa wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done for people who can't afford hosting fees or who don't understand how everything works and would not know where to start working on something like that. People go to the free services because they're free of charge and often far easier to set up than rolling your own.

Not to mention better. To get a gmail level of features and service, I would have to spend an arm and a leg. It's a completely unrealistic solution.

I propose the term "RMS solution" for this sort of thing: it's a lot of bother, but I'm glad that somebody is keeping it a viable option, just in case.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#105

Post by sp332 »

ctdonath wrote: post #22

Good life lesson for the kid about government, and why freedom & liberty are so important. And set her up with her own website already. Show her the power she has to not put up with such stupid limitations.

1. This has nothing to do with the government.

2. Google are completely within their rights to do this. It's their servers after all.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#107

Post by nirvdrum »

ck2 wrote: post #32

So - when was the last time everyone reading this backed up their gmail? Take the next 5 minutes to install thunderbird (you'll be impressed if you have not seen it in years) and enter the IMAP settings for google and download everything in the background while you work. When your account gets hacked and you lose everything, you'll appreciate the backup.

If you have additional services (e.g., Google Docs or Flickr) and are willing to trust someone else with your data, I highly recommend backupify. I set it up for my gapps account and my personal stuff. Pretty easy to set up. And then you can just export all your data at once.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do know the backupify team, but I pay for the product because I find it useful.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#108

Post by quanticle »

Vivtek wrote: post #66
dotBen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A parent can't 'over-rule' a federal law. "Hey Mr Food-N-Liquor owner, I give you consent for you to sell my 18 year old alcohol" etc

COPPA explicitly provides for a parental consent mechanism; Google simply doesn't choose to implement it. Everybody else implements it just fine.

Everyone else? Hardly. Facebook doesn't implement it. Twitter doesn't implement it. MSN doesn't. Pretty much all forums out there require you to "verify" that you're older than 13 to post. Google is hardly the only site to judge the consent mechanism exception to be too burdensome and unprofitable to implement.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#109

Post by garbowza »

This was the reason I co-founded Moment Garden http://momentgarden.com, to help parents securely save the memories of their child.

I know it's a leap to trust a small startup with such important data, but with stories of Google arbitrarily shutting down accounts, it helps make our case.

Sure, we've had some growing pains, but when a parent emails us with problems, they get in touch with a founder who will make the situation right. Good luck getting that with Google.

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