Child-safety software sells kids' IM conversations to market-research companies

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i5CjgMEdrwRm3JxeglUykMAHAYmAD9AGNVM00

by rms • 17 years ago

64 15 17 years ago

jacquesm• 17 years ago

"Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games."

If it can do that it can send back whole conversations as well, but the software company 'does not record childrens names or addresses' ??

They ought to be made an example of if this is true.

"In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms."

Heads should really roll over this one, they get you to pay to be able to sell your kids chat logs. It's absolutely disgusting.

Parents installing such software should take note that it is better to invest in educating your kids than it is to invest in software to police your kids.

If your children are old enough to be online unsupervised then you have to educate them to the point where they are capable of dealing with that responsibility without you or a digital sentry looking over their shoulder all the time.

It's all about trust.

desu2• 17 years ago

I'm not condoning this company's actions but since it is almost certainly a completely automated process, how does this differ from, say, gmail reading kids' conversations to display ads? Should gmail be restricted from doing such for minors?

How about online communities like Habbo Hotel, et al? Because if they don't collect general marketing information from the activities within their pages, I'll eat my hat.

And how about if the software was free and marked as marketing-supported?

Just food for thought.

colinplamondon• 17 years ago

Totally and 100% different- we're talking algorithmic analysis versus actually honest to god selling the contents of your email.

dirkstoop• 17 years ago

Finally an answer to: "Who will think of the children?"

SwellJoe2• 17 years ago

There is a special place in hell for these people.

omouse• 17 years ago

Marketing hell shudder

rms2• 17 years ago

Can anyone think of a dumber/more offensive thing done by marketers?

milkshakes• 17 years ago

this one pissed a lot of people off, though i thought it was clever.

http://gothamist.com/2007/08/16/hangups_about_s.php

stse• 17 years ago

But until then they will probably prosper, as no one ever seems to get sentences for leaking/loosing/selling private information.

SwellJoe2• 17 years ago

I would hope that there are legal consequences...this is a huge breach of trust, and there are quite a few laws in place to protect children online from marketers and predators, and these people are both.

I would also hope that they have trouble sleeping at night...but I may be giving them too much credit.

dfranke• 17 years ago

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids' information at risk, since the program does not record children's names or addresses.

Unless, y'know, one of those conversations happens to begin with "hi billy".

TrevorJ• 17 years ago

As shady as this seems, if consumers put up with it, companies will keep doing this sort of junk. Consumers are going to have to take a clear stand on privacy issues if we don't want to see this sort of thing get even worse.

desu2• 17 years ago

Exactly what I was thinking - I bet 95% of their customers never even hear about this and furthermore, the activity is probably in their 30-page EULA so the parents agreed to it.

This kind of thing reminds me of that study which asserted that the COPA act would kill far more children via the targeted advertising for childrens' junk food it enabled than it would ever save from "online predators". Untended consequences ...

Child-safety software sells kids' IM conversations to market-research companies

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