Kids on the Web and; Your Privacy

Companies on the web are collecting all kinds of information these days, and they just might be collecting it from your children. A recent report from CBS News shows that children are exchanging information for free gifts on the Internet.

"On the web all the time companies are constantly collecting information about us, and teenagers are treated like adults on the Web," said Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Researchers at the school studied the response of children when they were offered a gift for giving information that you might consider private to a Web site. More than one third of the children said that they would give out information concerning allowance, family automobiles, political discussions and the like.

"If you say they'll get free this and free that, then they'll end wanting to give out that information and it's somewhat unfair," said Turow. "We don't think teenagers should be treated quite like adults." He also adds, "They [the Web sites] can, with a whole lot of new technologies, actually create a composite picture of you and your whole lifestyle that you have no idea that they are creating or what it says."

As of April, the federal government has been enforcing the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal ban on collecting personal information from children without a parent's permission. Lawmakers enacted the law after discovering that companies were extracting information from children while they were playing video games online or researching homework topics.

The study of 1,001 parents and 304 10- to 17- year old children, found that more than one-third of youths and two of every five parents said they experience tensions at home over children releasing information on the Internet. Almost half of the parents surveyed were unaware that Web sites gather information on users without their knowledge.

Turow states, "we found that kids, particularly older kids, were more willing to give out information than the parents, much more willing." He adds, "Sixty-one percent of parents say they are more concerned about 13- to 17- year olds. Kids 13 and older know more to give out."