RE: Location in the news

In my paper to the W3C seminar I said I knew of no location application that is nominally available to anyone under the age of 18.

Foursquare accepts people who are 13 and above. I stand corrected.

I just tried to join Foursquare as an 11 year old and it helpfully reminded me that 13 was the minimum age. Straight away I tried to join as a 12 year old, using exactly the same details as before. I got the same helpful reminder. Finally I got in as a 13 year old. From beginning to end the three attempts took me about 90 seconds.

Shall I hunt around for more example or maybe someone on this list already knows of other location apps that observe the same age limit (or some other sub-18 limit) and employ the same high standards of security to enforce them? Not.

-----Original Message-----
From: John Carr [mailto:johnc1912@msn.com] 
Sent: 23 July 2010 20:18
To: 'Marcos Caceres'; 'ifette@google.com'
Cc: 'public-privacy@w3.org'; 'David Rogers'; 'Karl Dubost'
Subject: Location in the news

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/23/foursquare 

Favourite bit:

"Technologically, it's not a huge step, but, socially, it is huge. The big moral questions are being left to the app developers to answer at the moment. This is irresponsible. Users are being socially engineered into allowing this level of privacy invasion through the over-hyping of the benefits."

Received on Sunday, 25 July 2010 18:43:58 UTC