Tracking Our Children

If you follow any news source, you know that children are increasingly targeted on the internet. However, child predators are not the only concern. The Wall Street Journal revealed this month that thirty percent more tracking technology is installed through websites directed at children than on those targeting adult viewers.

Children have always been targeted as a sales demographic, but for what reasons? The companies who generate many popular sites claim the information is collected solely for directing advertising toward their audience (which was a threat in itself ten years ago).  The owners of many sites even claim they never use the information to aim advertising directly to children. However, we have to ask why companies on the net would use their resources any differently than television advertisers. If an advertiser twenty years ago utilized morning cartoons to sell sugary breakfast cereal, why would  an advertiser refrain from using the  internet gaming phenomenon to sell products today? Of course, some of the tools installed by the tested sites logged information that did not reveal privacy concerns, like where a user paused in a game. However, other tools tracked the outside sites visited by users, logging trends in their usage.

It is very easy for one to assume that perhaps these companies do not follow children specifically, but instead track undefined users who simply visit their sites. But when we know that a children’s gaming site such as y8.com is owned by a company that peddles adult content online, the safety of children’s information on the internet becomes questionable. If these companies were not intending to track children or direct advertising toward them, they would not build and track websites that were intended for use by minors.

For more information on keeping your children’s online footsteps private, visit About Cookies or Safe Kids. To learn more about how new technology enables child tracking, take a look at this Privacy Revolt article, or a report at Democracy Now regarding a school program that has outfitted children with RFID chips.