To help kids avoid the many traps and pitfalls set up by online marketers, parents themselves need to become more informed about online marketing techniques and privacy issues -- and then pass the information on to their kids. In particular, parents should teach their kids to:
Think critically about commercial Web sites
Kids need to be educated about online marketing, and need to recognize when they're being sold to -- and how. Teach your kids that while commercial sites may be fun to visit, they exist to make money. The contests, quizzes and surveys are there for a reason: to collect personal information from kids like yours, and to use it to create marketing strategies to reach other kids.
Protect their personal information
Your kids should always check with you before submitting any personal information online. If they absolutely must give out an email address to participate in a commercial Web site, you can set up a "dummy" Hotmail account for them.
Know the difference between branded and non-branded sites
Branded commercial sites for kids are easy to spot. They're associated with a specific company or brand, and feature products and characters produced and trademarked by the company. Their purpose is to build brand loyalty, to sell products, and to use the information they get from visitors to develop their marketing strategies.
Non-branded commercial sites aren't as obvious, since they don't appear to be affiliated with a specific company or brand. They may feature the products of a number of different companies, or no product at all. Their chief purpose is to conduct surveys and research for the purpose of gathering personal information about the children who visit their site -- either for the sole benefit of their site partners, or to sell to other interested third parties. Read online privacy policies
Not all Web sites have privacy policies -- and when they do, it's important to learn to read the fine print. A good privacy policy will come right out and tell users what information is being collected from kids, and how it will be used. It should also allow parents to view the information collected on their child, and edit or delete it if they wish.
Recognize responsible children's sites
A responsible site for kids should:
- Identify its partners
- Make sure the difference is clear between its content and any advertisements
- Make sure that it has a privacy policy; that the policy is written in language that kids can understand; and that the policy can be reached both from the home page, and from any other pages where kids are asked to submit information
- State clearly in its privacy policy that any information collected from children will not be sold to a third party
- Ensure that parents are aware of the unprotected nature of its chat rooms, bulletin boards, and email activities; and take steps to safeguard the children who participate in them
- Provide monitored chat environments
- Require parental consent to be obtained before any child under 13 releases any personal information. This consent should be verifiable, not just a simple exhortation such as: "Hey, kids, be sure to get your parents' permission before you give out information online!"
As well, parents should also consider using filtering software
Free filtering software can be downloaded from the Internet. These programs block ads on Web sites; however, they're not effective on sites where advertising is presented as content.
Another useful kind of software filters outgoing information, and prevents children from giving out any personal information online. Parents can program the software with children's names, addresses and telephone numbers, so that if they try to send it to anybody online it will merely show up as a row of asterixes or x's.
For more information on filtering, see Filtering Tools (on the right sidebar).
