RE: Children's online privacy.

Karl, David

The status quo is that there is no privacy. The web history of adults &
children is tracked to a massive extent without even their (or their
parents) knowledge. When or if we have privacy by default - or privacy
enforcing (and non fingerprint-able if that is possible) UAs - this may be
moot, but in the meantime we need to make trade-offs if we are to achieve
anything. Even DNT:1 leaks some information about a user.

I expect most concerned parents would agree with sensible trade-offs.

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Dubost [mailto:karld@opera.com] 
Sent: 07 November 2012 13:23
To: David Singer
Cc: public-privacy@w3.org list; Fred Andrews
Subject: Re: Children's online privacy.

To go along with David, because I think it is important.

Le 7 nov. 2012 à 06:35, David Singer a écrit :
> if a website has the means (and maybe responsibility) to work out whether
a visitor is a child or not, that in itself is yielding some information
about visitors (and hence part of their privacy)


A knife doesn't know the user is a child.
So I do not think a user agent should identify the user is a child. Because
waiving a flag about who the person is makes the person the target, quite
the opposite of the initial intent.

It's usually better to have requirements on service providers to check who
are their users. Yes it is complex. But this goes for bookshops, alcohol
shops, etc.

Identification, Profiling should not replace education too. But that is a
larger debate.

-- 
Karl Dubost - http://dev.opera.com/
Developer Relations, Opera Software

Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2012 23:31:15 UTC