Rich Warren, a software engineer from Houston, Texas, never imagined his daughter would be brought to tears by Google. Sadly, that’s exactly what Warren claims happened — via a post
on Google+ — when Google shut down his daughter’s account Sunday
morning, because according to the company’s policy she is too young.
Google’s decision raises an important discussion about how young is
too young for using the Internet, particularly in this increasingly
digital age.
Warren started a Google account for her daughter so she could stay in
touch with her grandparents and friends. Haruko, Warren’s
daughter, also started a Blogger account as part of a class project.
She’s now lost access to those blog posts, homework saved on her Google
account and the contact information of far-away friends.
Under Google’s Terms of Service, you can’t use Google’s services if
you’re not “of legal age to form a binding contract with Google,” or if
you’re prevented from using Google’s services by the law of the country
in which you live. In the U.S., Google must comply with the Children’s
Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), under which children younger than
13 must provide the permission of a parent or guardian before giving
out personal information online. Google doesn’t collect permissions for
its services, and many other U.S.-based companies take this route to
avoid dealing with COPPA.
Because Haruko was younger than 13 when her account was created,
Google decided to shut down her account without warning. And then came
the tears. Google’s Terms of Service clearly state their age
requirement, but Warren argues Google had many ways to deal with his
daughter’s account other than deletion.
What does Warren want?
“An apology would always be nice,” he wrote. “I’d like to know what
my options are. Can I download her contacts and e-mails? Quite a few
other people have had similar problems. Is Google doing anything to
solve [the problem]?”
When asked for comment, a Google spokesperson said, “We have actually
been asking for users’ birth dates on several services for years.
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. It’s not as simple as just asking a parent for
consent to let their child have an account — there are associated
implications for data and privacy involved. We know that this data is
important to people, and we want to help by finding the right solutions.
We’re also working on designing special safety settings for teens.”
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