Parents Oppose Gathering Children’s Data

Parents in the United States have been expressing strong concerns about the sharing of kids’ personal information over the web. A resent survey was released just before law makers decided to strengthen child privacy legislation. According to its result, 90% of adults said that the advertisers had an obligation to get the go-ahead before harvesting the name, address or any other personal information of a user under 13.

They also believe that businesses should refrain from asking for a kid’s location or data about friends. However, too much regulation can stifle the growing Internet, media and mobile industries, because they mostly rely on sharing and storing data to expand their businesses.

Moreover, there are no certain regulations on what can or can’t be done. Hopefully, this will change after the Federal Trade Commission votes in December on revisions to a 1998 law, enforced before the mobile computing rocketed. Under new regulations, advertisers will require permission from parents to track kids online with cookies or other instruments.

The Federal Trade Commission is also planning to introduce an update which will ensure that social networking services like Facebook and Zynga are responsible for their partner websites taking information on kids as well. For instance, if a kid presses Facebook’s “like” button on the other site, Facebook would be also responsible for the handling of his or her data. The proposed changes will also require Internet companies to receive permission from parents to ask for identifying location of children.

80% of parents opposed to allowing advertisers to gather and make use of data about kids’ activities on the Internet, even if they don’t know the real name and address. In the meantime, experts claim they must ensure that the regulations are updated effectively so that the young people growing up on the Internet these days will be treated fairly in the growing digital marketplace.

Some parents admit that it’s bad enough that the sites lack secure controls to stop kids getting on, but then taking advantage of this and their habits is something else. Indeed, it is obvious that these websites allow minors on because they can make some sort of revenue from their information through advertisers. However, the morals are all wrong, and parents want at least to be asked what private details on their kids can be collected.