Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

https://plus.google.com/114311896476820866022/posts/QkKTxAbKGdq

by zdw • 15 years ago

391 191 15 years ago

plus.google.com

tiles• 15 years ago

A similar article from this past July titled (aptly) "Google made my son cry": http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-...

Cl4rity• 15 years ago

I was just about to reference this article. Same shit, different day.

jronkone• 15 years ago

And here I almost thought I was going crazy...

shard• 15 years ago

Ah, it was a different person. I was wondering how the guy got away with reposting the same story...

redwood• 15 years ago

Funny isn't it, how "son cry" and "daughter cry" have very different rhetorical weights.

cma• 15 years ago

chromebook: 13 and up

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

I have to wonder if anyone at Google even thought about the repercussions of that.

RexRollman2• 15 years ago

It is really sad that Google can't figure out a way for those under 13 to have accounts, provided there is a parent signing off on it. And the first comment by someone about how their child can't log onto their Chromebook anymore is particularly disturbing.

artursapek2• 15 years ago

"Log onto our website, but only with your parents' permission!" died quickly a decade ago for a reason. There's virtually no way of validating that. Which is why I'm still surprised that movie and video game sites still use the faded "Enter your age to continue" screen.

ThePawnBreak• 15 years ago

How is adding a decade or two to your age when registering any less difficult to validate?

dexen• 15 years ago

Losing access to Chromebook is an interesting case. Where did we go so wrong that breaching particular point of AuP causes our own hardware to become inaccessible?

People rally against zealous lockdown of PC (recently restricted boot in EFI, earlier TrustedComputing in general). Not being able to install any software of choice (with reasonably little effort) sure is bad, but having an already functioning computer swept right from under your fingertips could easily be way more damaging. Government couldn't do that without serious due process. Why a company can, and why aren't there voices of stern protest?

sigmaxipi2• 15 years ago

FYI, you can still log into a Chromebook with a Anonymous/Incognito/Guest account and use it as long as you don't care about persistence. Chromebooks are designed to be orthogonal to a Google account so changing the accounts that are attached to a given Chromebook is trivial.

codexon2• 15 years ago

Advertising to kids is a low to non-profit activity.

DanBC• 15 years ago

What?

That's nonsense - look at the hours of merchandise promotion across dozens of channels. Toys is billions of dollars per year.

jamesgagan• 15 years ago

i'd be interested to see if this got enough +1's if it would show up in the "What's hot on Google+" section.

quanticle2• 15 years ago

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 starting to intrude onto the choices that parents make when raising their children, and that it should be repealed immediately. As long as COPPA exists, we'll see more and more stories like this.

1010011010• 15 years ago

COPPA is fucking stupid legislation, but Google should at least provide a "parental consent" mechanism.

dotBen• 15 years ago

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

wicknicks• 15 years ago

COPPA seems ridiculous and naive. Its harder for a kid to access GMail/Facebook than a porn site! I don't think Google is not to blame here. They should have sent a warning to the daughter's email address atleast. Tomorrow all someone needs to kill my account is to crack into it, and change my date or birth -- and let Google do the rest.

DuncanIdaho2• 15 years ago

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.

pjscott5• 15 years ago

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

thenextcorner• 15 years ago

This is why you should take control of your own data, and not let your data in the hands of a company. Buy your own email address, set up your own blog self hosted.

pyre• 15 years ago

What would you suggest for comparable calendar and contact management software?

icebraining3• 15 years ago

I think Zimbra is a common suggestion, but I'm not sure how comparable it is.

Tangaroa2• 15 years ago

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.

shinratdr• 15 years ago

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.

a3_nm• 15 years ago

At the very least, keep a backup, which is much simpler.

Running your own shouldn't be that complicated, but it won't become easy until enough people start switching.

DuncanIdaho2• 15 years ago

What about the Google commercial, where parents open a childs google account upon birth, fill it with images and commentary...

Only to have it all deleted when Google get around to it?

joelhaasnoot2• 15 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk

Kylekramer4• 15 years ago

Pretty well covered here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3010687

TL;DR: The account in the commercial is the parent's, not the kid's.

danilocampos14• 15 years ago

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.

cmoscoso• 15 years ago

You're the Product.

joelhaasnoot2• 15 years ago

Whatever happend to "If you are under 18 (or 13?), ask your parents or gaurdian for permission"?

Believe that's the current Dutch regulations, not an expert though. It's quite unfair to assume that companies will keep track of this. Kids under 13 should probably have parental/monitored internet usage anyway.

(Though I have to admit to having had a Fb account back when it was 18+ when I was 17. School wasn't on Fb and everyone did it...)

dangrossman• 15 years ago

It's a US company so they have to obey COPPA, which requires verifiable consent from a parent before collecting any private information from the child and restricts marketing to that child. So, in practical terms, for Google to offer mail accounts to children under 13, they need to be able to collect faxed or mailed proof of consent from parents, have some system to process that information and tie it to the accounts, then they need special rules for the ads shown on the gmail site to that user.

CamperBob4• 15 years ago

Why do no other COPPA-compliant account providers require anyone to fax or mail anything?

cschmidt• 15 years ago

I'd suggest a Fastmail.fm account instead. Their TOS says:

    This Service is provided to individuals who are at least 18 
    years old or minors who have parental permission to open 
    and maintain an account.

I think I read somewhere that they consider a charge on a parent's credit card to be explicit parental consent. Makes sense to me.

Also, since you are paying them a little money, they offer actual technical support, unlike Google.

They also have family accounts, where you can have one person take care of billing and administration of several accounts. That's what I use for my whole family, including my parents.

danilocampos14• 15 years ago

B-b-but Google made this fancy video advertisement about how I can give my infant daughter a Gmail account and write to her as she grows up! Does it only work if she never uses it? You've gotta wait until you can hold a bat mitzvah to hand it off to her?

This kind of chicanery is why I can only chuckle when Google announces new initiatives that require significant customer service, like selling telephones or providing a fulfillment system to compete with Amazon Prime. They treat their users like ants. And given the way their business is structured, that scale is about correct.

Google doesn't need for any given user of their service to be pleased. They're a whale, straining krill from the ocean, playing a vast advertising numbers game on a scale individuals can barely grasp, and can barely factor into.

Which is not an illegitimate position. But it poses a problem for individuals who are swept into its gaping maw - there is zero incentive machinery to compel Google to ever get things corrected. Depending on where a product is on its growth curve, it might even cost Google more to fix the problem than to replace the users. Your only recourse is to hope for enough public embarrassment to short-circuit the system.

It also calls into question the viability of their entry into any business where service is a differentiating characteristic.

yanw• 15 years ago

That is not entirely fair, automation is the only way to admin millions of users and when nonsensical factors like COPPA get introduced to the system this happens. And I don't think that they did anything wrong here considering the consequences of not complying with the law.

danilocampos14• 15 years ago

The fact that it makes Google look bad doesn't impact its fairness. I acknowledged that that's not an illegitimate way to run the business.

But that doesn't really matter to a little girl whose correspondence with loved ones has disappeared down a black hole. That despair is as reasonable as Google's indifference. And, it points to a great opportunity to make a reliable mail service that addresses the needs of the ever-growing population of young people who will need email long before it is regulatorily convenient to Google.

biot2• 15 years ago

Disney manages to provide good customer service for the millions of real-life humans that walk its theme parks annually. Google's problem is not that it can't be done, but that it's unprofitable to provide customer service when your business model consists of making a few pennies here and there.

joemoon• 15 years ago

From the post:

> They provide COPPA compliant email accounts for children under 13 from their Apps for Education domains.

The capability is obviously there, and apparently COPPA has a way for parents to provide consent.

einhverfr4• 15 years ago

So here's where the problem occurs with the law and Google's business model.

Android...... Where does it say anywhere that Android devices can only be sold to those old enough not to be covered by COPPA?

maigret• 15 years ago

Amazon has quite an awesome service actually for the few times I had to deal with them. They also have quite a few users. Oh, but right, those are actually customers paying for what they get. I guess Google support is what you get for using a free service after all.

csmt• 15 years ago

This is absurd. Instead of not collecting data for children Google is blocking access to children. I am seriously looking for alternatives to Gmail. Any suggestions? I don't want my email account hooked up to a social network and advertising machinery.

eli• 15 years ago

It's a bit more complex than that. In order to comply, Google would need to verify that you are a parent/guardian and that you are giving permission for your child to join. Faxing of identity documents would likely be involved.

Google's approach is heavy handed, but it's a really bad law.

danilocampos14• 15 years ago

It seems like a very straightforward solution to me.

If an account is created for a person under-age, suspend ad service to that account (end data collection) and require a nominal fee to activate it (which provides abundant evidence of parental consent). Cutting off the next generation from email does not seem like the answer. Would a Montessori-educated, eight-year-old Sergey Brin have appreciated such treatment?

Since that won't happen, I mean, when we have kids I guess we just have to pay for hosting and administer their email ourselves?

xer0• 15 years ago

Get your own domain and point your email at fastmail.fm.

rickmb• 15 years ago

This may be a bit out there, but how about paying for email services?

madao• 15 years ago

Its very easy, simply jump onto Amazon's ec2 free instance and setup a webserver/webmail vm

it will cost you very little and you will not have to deal with crap like that, alternatively you can have a chat to your friendly domain hosting company, I am sure they will have something that will fit your needs.

speleding• 15 years ago

This has been covered on HN before, the solution is pretty simple: just use a (free) Google Apps account instead and create accounts for your children. You will be responsible for complying with COPPA yourself instead of Google.

All you need is a domain name, but it's a good idea to have that anyways in case you ever want to leave. I use this solution with my kids and it works great because it also allows me to control access to certain services and reset passwords for them, etc.

ww520• 15 years ago

But since Google can't collect data to target ad to the children, Google doesn't make any money from them. Google don't need children that can't pay money. Case closed.

okoni8• 15 years ago

It's not absurd when you know that collecting data and google are two sides of the same coin.

Want your email free, just do it the internet way: host your own.

unabridged• 15 years ago

their time as innovative and useful is coming to a halt. they have nearly zero incentive any more to improve, even in their core products. search results everyday become more and more polluted with seo spam. google maps hasn't changed in years, still the same blocky loading and no useful overlays like demographic data built right in.

eurleif• 15 years ago

>google maps hasn't changed in years, still the same blocky loading

MapsGL. http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...

fpgeek3• 15 years ago

Indoor maps? Not to mention this whole Google Maps on your phone thing (and navigation on your Android phone)...

magicalist4• 15 years ago

It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing.

Everyone plays the balance game. You can have the best customer service in the world, but my daughter is still going to cry if your moving company breaks her stuff, or your store sells us tainted dog food, or your family-run email service writes the wrong data to the backup tapes just before a failure. Amazon might be awesome in terms of rates of well handled customers, but Google is doing pretty well, maw metaphors notwithstanding.

edit: it's really the rates of bad experiences/customer I'm talking about. There's another side of things, that of, bad experiences/customer with a problem, which Amazon is better at (in a market that isn't really comparable to the one in which google's services primarily reside, of course). On the other hand, Bezos's often cited goal of every call that has to be made to customer service being a bug to be fixed is exactly google's goal, it just sounds a lot better when there's still a number you could call.

CamperBob4• 15 years ago

It may feel like the Googles and the Facebooks are self-sustaining juggernauts, but customer happiness and retention is exactly the incentive machinery you are missing.

Except we're not their customers.

cynwoody4• 15 years ago

This would seem to have more to do with the 535 dumbest people on the planet than with Google.

funkah• 15 years ago

What? Kids cry all the time, come on.

okoni8• 15 years ago

This is a common case of "If you are not paying for it, you are the product being sold.", this is what happens when you engage in careless computing and put your data on a third party remote server under their control.

Don't be careless and it won't come back and bite you.

ctdonath2• 15 years ago

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.

sp3324• 15 years ago

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.

dillona• 15 years ago

The reason this happened is a rather obnoxious law called Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA)

ctdonath2• 15 years ago

1. Others have referenced the law involved.

2. That's why I said "Set her up with her own website already". Notice I didn't blame Google.

ronaldj• 15 years ago

Good thing Yahoo didn't do this in the 90's otherwise no one in my middle school class wouldn't have had an email account.

Tangaroa2• 15 years ago

If Google did not collect and sell its users' personal information, they would not have to worry about a law saying they can't do that to kids.

learc833• 15 years ago

That's how they make money. Their entire business model is based on it.

TANSTAAFL, you're paying for their services by acting as their product.

MichaelApproved• 15 years ago

I bet the biggest thing holding Google back is that many will say they're under 13 just to take advantage of the ad restrictions and privacy protections placed on those accounts.

jodrellblank• 15 years ago

they've chosen to act apparently without ever considering how their actions might affect the people who use and rely on their services.

Hyperbolic nonsense. Their consideration for multicultural, international, legal, technical, practical, and end user issues under time and effort constraints doesn't come out exactly the way you wanted it to under one edge case that you happen to hit therefore they "haven't ever considered"?

Never assign to malice what can be adequately be explained by stupidity needs a corollorary - never assign to malice or stupidity what can adequately be explained by being outside the normal patterns of a huge system.

danilocampos14• 15 years ago

> outside the normal patterns of a huge system

Can you expand a bit on how a sentient human being, wishing to communicate with other sentient human beings, is outside the normal patterns of a communications system?

yew3• 15 years ago

Google isn't just a communication system, though. They're a very large corporation involved in numerous enterprises that often interfere with one another, and their actions are further modified by an even larger legal system that only imperfectly represents the collective will of its constituents.

Decisions are often (indeed, perhaps mostly) made without any consideration of individual people (even the people making the decisions aren't always entirely conscious of what they're doing). I don't believe that's a necessity, but a lot of people are pretty comfortable with it and it mostly approximates working. This sort of thing shouldn't come as a terrible surprise.

PPGualtieri• 15 years ago

That's why no one should ever trust $GenericCompany$ blindly with their data without having a backup.

jimktrains2• 15 years ago

Everyone asks why I still run a mail client when I could just use webmail.

This is why. They just don't get it.

ck2• 15 years ago

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.

gonzo• 15 years ago

or install something like https://github.com/imapsync/imapsync

and be able to backup your imap mailboxes without a GUI

icebraining3• 15 years ago

I use http://offlineimap.org/

TillE• 15 years ago

That should be SOP in any case. Just takes a few clicks to make Thunderbird sync everything from IMAP (Account Settings -> Synchronization & Storage).

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

I prefer POP3. Then just mix in Dropbox and local backups, and my email is pretty darn safe.

pak• 15 years ago

This is a great idea, I just set it up on a spare box using Matt Cutts' instructions for getmail and POP3.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/backup-gmail-in-linux-with-get...

If anybody else tries this, I'd recommend sticking with POP3 as getmail's IMAP client seems to mark all your messages as read (not cool).

nirvdrum• 15 years ago

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.

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

For the record Thunderbird's IMAP sync is not a reliable backup mechanism by itself. If many emails are deleted from your account, Thunderbird will sync (and delete your files locally) before you have the opportunity to copy them off somewhere safe. I know this from deleting all my mails off my gmail account (to make an encrypted archive) and trying to use TB as a reliable storage method -- since I had just taken a backup of my TB directory I didn't lose any mail, but it should be emphasized that TB with IMAP sync is not a backup mechanism.

However, there are some great TB extensions that will allow you to export your mail into a reasonable, portable format every so often. I use ImportExportTools to export my mailbox to an mbox file and store that file securely. I can use this file to reimport to Thunderbird or any other mail client, or even to read some mail directly. :)

keypusher• 15 years ago

I believe you can configure TB to handle this situation differently. That is, if a mail is deleted from the web mailbox, retain the copy on disk.

okoni8• 15 years ago

You'd do better by moving out of gmail (if you have one) and host your own mail as it was originally intended to be.

miles_matthias2• 15 years ago

Isn't this an old story? I feel like I read this exact story a few months ago.

joelmichael• 15 years ago

I felt the same way. Turns out there was a story in July with an almost identical title, but they seem to be different occurrences. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2725983

miles_matthias2• 15 years ago

Ah good catch. Thanks.

funthree• 15 years ago

Seems eerily the same.

portentint• 15 years ago

Not sure I'd blame Google as much as COPPA, and the politicians who think parents can't make this choice on their own.

Of course, our kids can still find p0rn, violence and who-knows-what-else online with no filtering whatsoever. But at least they can't blog about it.

pjscott5• 15 years ago

The primary purpose of online child-protection laws is to make their supporters look and feel like concerned citizens who protect children. Their efficacy at actually protecting children from anything is laughable.

tristanperry2• 15 years ago

A pretty bad story - not that I'm surprised though. Google have never been good at customer service (obviously with the web so large and most of Google being free, you can't expect much, but what is 'offered' is usually sub-par, even for paid products).

On the plus side, this is #1 on Hacker News meaning Matt Cutts should reply any second and internally flag this up inside Google.

One of the comments on the Google+ entry also stuck out:

"The same happened to me. It also means my daughter can't log into her Chromebook!"

If that's true that's pretty awful. It does bring up a good point though - if Google close your account (rightly or wrongly), it does make owning a Chromebook somewhat useless.

Matt_Cutts• 15 years ago

COPPA is pretty far afield from my area of expertise. I'm more than happy to encourage people back at the plex to talk about the situation with COPPA and our services though.

tristanperry2• 15 years ago

Thanks Matt. It's something I hadn't really thought about although this story has raised an interesting point/concern.

ajays• 15 years ago

I'm a bit disheartened to see that everyone is buying the COPPA bullshit. Yes, COPPA is the law that applies, and has some restrictions. But that doesn't force Google to act like a total dick about it!

Lets assume there's an automated process for detecting underage accounts. Why can't they just prevent the account from being used to send email? Or why can't they say "Sorry, we have to disable your account; but you can download all of your emails at (insert some secure link to a ZIP file)"?? Or, as the post says, migrate these accounts to their COPPA-compliant set of accounts?

You know what the real problem is? The real problem is that Google collects a shit-load of data about its users. And they don't want to put in filters which will not log the data of underage children, because that opens them up to scrutiny. So they would rather keep this blackbox closed, and in the process if a few kids get screwed, then, well, screw 'em!

adgar2• 15 years ago

> Lets assume there's an automated process for detecting underage accounts. Why can't they just prevent the account from being used to send email?

Any data collection is forbidden by COPPA without parental verification. You seem to think that's just logging ad targeting data or something. No, it includes any information entered by the child into the service. So not only can they not send any email, they can't receive e-mail. They can't even have an email address! They can't thumbs up a video on youtube, let alone save one as a favorite video for later. You could only view google docs that are globally-viewable, since you can't share a private document with a child without storing some data about them. They certainly can't edit a document!

It goes on and on.

okoni8• 15 years ago

everything you mentioned seems to me to be ad targeting data, email, email address, thumbs up, save as fav even viewing a global google docs all this is part of data collected as part of the profiling process in order to do ad targeting.

Actually I don't think there is a single you do once logged on (or registered) that is not collected to profile you. facebook even collects what you do when logged off.

sliverstorm2• 15 years ago

I never can quite buy in to fuss like this. They are just a company, and I am not surprised nor do I get upset when I get caught in a cog. Knowing that it can happen, I prepare.

As they say, "Luck favors the prepared".

sigmaxipi2• 15 years ago

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 their age in order to circumvent the parental consent requirement or obtain access to the site

...

However, as described in Question 38, above, should you choose to block children under 13, it is important that you design your age collection input screens in a manner that does not encourage children to provide a false age in order to gain access to your site. If you take reasonable measures to screen for age, then you are not responsible if a child misstates his or her age. For example:

...

Not encouraging children to falsify their age information, for example, by stating that visitors under 13 cannot participate on your website or should ask their parents before participating. In addition, a site that does not ask for neutral date of birth information but rather simply includes a check box stating “I am over 12 years old” would not be considered a neutral age-screening mechanism.

pjscott5• 15 years ago

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

modeless• 15 years ago

This is the important bit that people miss. Google isn't allowed to warn you that changing your age will apply restrictions to your account, and they aren't allowed to let you easily undo it after it's done. This is what happens when Congress dictates user interfaces.

cynwoody4• 15 years ago

So, in effect, this means a kid is 13 as soon as he figures out he needs to be 13. OK.

Not all kids are created equal, and some kids will be 13 sooner than others. Some might argue that's not fair. But, back in the day, I would not have been among them.

vasco• 15 years ago

I remember being on the internet since I was about 10 and I always said I was over 18 for whatever I did on the internet because I knew otherwise there would be restrictions. Is this a hard concept to grasp?

cynwoody4• 15 years ago

Nope.

And it should set your attitude towards the government for the rest of your life.

tokenadult• 15 years ago

An example of a United States-based website that has a user-friendly COPPA procedure for opening parent-approved accounts for users under age thirteen is the Art of Problem Solving,

https://www.artofproblemsolving.com/

a site that many HN users may like, especially if they have children, because of its many resources for learning mathematics. It's regrettable that Google doesn't follow this example.

How is Google's behavior in this reported instance consistent with Google's claimed support for data liberation?

http://www.dataliberation.org/

And how is the lack of notice and lack of help for parents who approve of their children having email accounts (not to mention Google's apparently contrary advertising campaigns) consistent with a policy of "Don't be evil"?

http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html

holograham• 15 years ago

not sure I get how people can assume Google (or any company, person, or government) owes them something. Google provides a free service (which they figured out how to support via ads). They can refuse service to anyone. In this case, google is enforcing a rule that is not even their own. Obviously there is a huge pre-teen advertising market that they cannot capitalize on because of this rule. You have knowingly broken this rule, used the account and got caught. They make is clear when you sign up that you must be over 13. Tough luck.

tobtoh• 15 years ago

This old chestnut of an argument gets rolled out every time a situation like this occurs - "Well they are the rules, you should have read them, it's your fault. Suck it up".

In most situations I've read, the people don't so much object the rules, they object to the unfairness of them. Two factors often come into play - were the rules clearly stated and is the penalty in proportion to the 'crime'.

'Rules clearly stated' doesn't mean 'here is a 10 page 8pt font terms and conditions document we assume you read' because you clicked through a EULA apge. If your rule is going to have an impact where they will likely lose their service, that had better be upfront and unmistakable. The dad claims he didn't see such a warning and in all the Google accounts I've signed up for, I don't recall reading such a condition either (I'm sure it's there, I just don't recall ever having seen it).

Punishment fitting the crime - it's a bit like those banks which charge you a $5 fee for falling below the $4 minimum amount you have to keep in your account, and then charging you an overdraft fee, then charging you for accessing an overdraft you hadn't previously arranged, then charging you for ... etc. Or perhaps laws where 'if you aren't doing anything criminal, you should have nothing to fear about constant unwarranted surveillance, searches or whatever'. Just because a rule is broken doesn't mean it's fair game for any penalty to be applied.

In the case of this kid, losing access to all that data seems to be unfair. I get the sense that if the dad could at least retrieve the data, most of his unhappiness would be gone and he would move on.

Arguing with a 'the rules have been broken, lynch them' position, really doesn't take into account basic human behaviours - people make mistakes, you have to help them not make them (clear rules) and guiding them to the correct behaviour when they deviate (appropriate in proportion punishments).

Of course, a business doesn't have to take into account basic human behaviour - that's their right - but they rightly deserve the scorn at their lack of respect for their customers when they get called out.

okoni8• 15 years ago

Sorry you have to learn it this way, but most people lie about birthdate as a number entered in an online form is no proof of age.

garbowza• 15 years ago

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.

svdr• 15 years ago

When my son (10) filled out his g+ profile, in which they ask for date of birth, his gmail was blocked. I could reopen it by confirming (lying) he was older, and paying a small fee by credit card.

lifeformed• 15 years ago

How did Google find out her age?

joebadmo• 15 years ago

Google is less flexible and less responsive on this and similar issues than they could or should be.

But. This discussion should be about COPPA. See danah boyd's illuminating research and analysis on the subject here:

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/11/01/parents...

cscheid• 15 years ago

(Yes, this is a little cynical, but) The distinction between Google making money from you vs. Google having you as a client seems to explain some of what happened. But did they simply not see this sort of problem arising after their family ads? That's astonishingly short-sighted.

Is this kind of problem widespread with google products? That is, could it be explained by a small number of bad calls from somewhere inside Google's innards?

mapster• 15 years ago

My kids use my account. Unless Google can somehow tell that it is a child writing and sending the email they would assume it is me. Making an email account specifically for my child (with his/her name, age, etc.) seems dangerous to me anyhow, and for good reason, since Google will lock the account.

47• 15 years ago

Where were you when the COPPA law was introduce? Did you write a single letter to your legislators? Did you write a single blog post against COPPA?

anxrn• 15 years ago

This post hit me with a serious case of deja vu.

And then I dug this up: http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-...

atarian• 15 years ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one.

whiletruefork• 15 years ago

To my knowledge complying with COPPA is a difficult and tedious process. Common sense does not apply, and in fact, in my understanding, can often put you in violation of the law (for example: stating that you are going to remove someones access for being underage , because then they can reasonably understand that lying is in their best interest).

Blame your own government, not Google.

flexd• 15 years ago

A bit late to the party but wasn't this exact text posted somewhere else at least 6 months back? If not more. I am 100% sure I read something like this with the exact same title before. On topic: What on earth does a child really need Gmail or anything for anyway? I would like my future children to learn about technology and be interested in how things work but on the other hand giving a 8 year old a cellphone or something seems ridiculous.

theseanstewart• 15 years ago

Will someone please explain to me how Google knows the age of the person using the account? Just lie about the age of your kid when you create them an email account. It's really that simple.

zachinglis• 15 years ago

I believe I've seen similar a post with this exact name here about a year ago. Nice to know Google have fixed it -_-

moondowner• 15 years ago

I think that I've already read this somewhere? (Google made my son cry) http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-...

buff-a• 15 years ago

In case you missed it, bean counters, not geeks, have been running google for a while now.

Egregore• 15 years ago

It's why I haven't switched to any online service and still have e-mail addresses at my own domain also I'm still using an e-mail client, so I'll e-mail backup both at client side and at server side.

Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

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