Data Archives - GetKidsInternetSafe

Most of us love to have free online platforms available to us for information and entertainment. But have you ever noticed that each person’s online “feed” differs? Learn how your online behaviors are tracked, monitored, studied, and sold in today’s GKIS article. If you worry your family hasn’t covered all the bases in regard to online safety, check out our Screen Safety Essentials Course to learn how to be internet safe for you and your family.

Your Digital Footprint

Let’s cover some basic tech vocabulary to start.

A digital footprint is a data map that is left behind anytime you use the internet. You may be notified that your data is being tracked or it may be happening without your explicit consent.

When you aren’t aware of the data that is being collected, you have a passive digital footprint.[2] This information usually includes your IP address and where and when it came from.

An active digital footprint is created when you upload information about yourself on a website, usually under a profile.[3]

The term cookies refers to a third-party system that collects statistics about your current browsing to tailor your future browsing experience. Cookies remain even after you leave a website.[4] There is usually a pop-up service announcement informing you about the use of cookies when entering a website because of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This legislation was passed in Europe in 2018 to protect personal data and privacy for companies that intend to sell consumer data information to a third party.[6] This legislation requires any website to have a “cookie pop-up” for websites based in Europe or for those that target European citizens. Legislation similar to this is California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). CCPA is the first legislation in the United States to also protect users from having their data stored by a third party without their consent.[7] To learn more about protective legislation for online content, check out our GKIS article California’s Newest Online Privacy Protections for Kids.

What is surveillance capitalism?

Surveillance capitalism refers to the process of online data collection from cookies that can then be used to create an algorithm for personalized advertising. An algorithm is a specific sequence of content tailored for you that is automatically offered when you use a browser, app, social media, or shopping platform. Creating algorithms is profitable because it allows online businesses to tailor ads for you and offer products they think you’re most likely to buy.

Surveillance capitalism is practiced by companies that profit from knowing your interests and habitual online behaviors. Some corporations don’t sell to you directly. Instead, they collect your data and then sell it to third parties.[4] In this situation, YOU are the product. Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are required to release statements about their direct data collection. Many of them have also admitted to using third-party data companies.[5]

Dr. Bennett writes about this very phenomenon in her book Screen Time in the Mean Time.[8] She writes:

Websites often have many of these ad trackers surveilling your online activity. The data generated from online tracking has been referred to as digital exhaust because clusters of trackers can follow you from site to site. In addition to information collected from tracking, Facebook buys personal information about its users from one of many services like Experian and Equifax … Not only are adults targeted for ads, but the digital age has ushered in an increasing commercialization of childhood as well. Because of a dramatic increase in personal screen privatization (child Internet use without supervision) and unregulated corporate marketing, an enormous growth in advertising targets children.

Companies are so good at anticipating your interests, many speculate if they are recording your conversations. Find out if this is legal in our GKIS article, “Is Facebook Spying by Hijacking Your Smartphone Mic?”

What can you do to protect your privacy?

Review terms of service for every website.
Check privacy settings on browsers.[1]
Clear your data and search history frequently.
Filter and block for safe browsing.
Opt out of cookies for specific websites.

To learn more about cyber safety, Dr. B created the Cybersecurity & Red Flags Supplement to help parents learn about exposure to online risks and how to protect their privacy. Also, if you are a parent concerned about your child accessing the internet, check out the Screen Safety Toolkit. This toolkit guides you to learn how to filter your family’s browsing and offers information about our own favorite third-party party safety system.

Thanks to CSUCI intern Sarah Hernandez for researching Surveillance Capitalism.

I’m the mom psychologist who will help you GetKidsInternetSafe.

Onward to More Awesome Parenting,

Tracy S. Bennett, Ph.D.
Mom, Clinical Psychologist, CSUCI Adjunct Faculty
GetKidsInternetSafe.com

Work Cited

[1] How to search and find your digital footprint: TDS Home. TDS Home | Home, Internet, Phone, TV & DVR Services. (2019, September 12). Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://blog.tdstelecom.com/security/how-to-search-and-find-your-digital-footprint/

[2] Digital footprints. Family Lives. (n.d.). Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.familylives.org.uk/advice/your-family/online-safety/digital-footprints#:~:text=A%20passive%20footprint%20is%20made,sites%20or%20by%20using%20websites.

[3] Kaspersky. (2022, March 9). What is a digital footprint? and how to protect it from hackers. www.kaspersky.com. Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/what-is-a-digital-footprint

[4] Guide to third-party-data: Third-party-data services. Mobilewalla. (n.d.). Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.mobilewalla.com/third-party-data#what-is-third-party-data

[5] Lee, R. (2022, August 10). Can your phone hear your conversations? (yes, but here’s how). Spiralytics. Retrieved October 26, 2022, from https://www.spiralytics.com/blog/mobile-ads-can-phone-hear-conversations-infographic/

[6] What is GDPR, the EU’s new Data Protection Law? GDPR.eu. (2022, May 26). Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/

[7] Daniela. (n.d.). CCPA compliance with Cookiebot CMP. Cookiebot. Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://www.cookiebot.com/en/ccpa/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=usa-generic&utm_device=c&utm_term=do%2Bi%2Bneed%2Ba%2Bcookie%2Bpolicy%2Bon%2Bmy%2Bwebsite%2Busa&utm_content=usa-eng-cookie-policy&gclid=Cj0KCQiA37KbBhDgARIsAIzce15QgUuLTccBBOR_gea1lFedi3w7Id85Ubz06ejheiLsMeEFvnrZgVoaAsUMEALw_wcB

[8] Bennett, T. (2019). Screen time in the meantime: A parenting guide to get kids and teens internet safe. GetKidsInternetSafe Books. https://getkidsinternetsafe.com/parenting-guide/

Photo Credits

Chris Yang: https://unsplash.com/photos/1tnS_BVy9Jk

Maxim Hopman https://unsplash.com/photos/IayKLkmz6g0

Gerd Altmann https://pixabay.com/images/id-1054708/

In 2019, YouTube was fined 170 million dollars for illegally advertising to kids. In this article, we’ll cover how YouTube broke the law designed to offer protection for children online, what they did to fix it, and the gap that still puts kids at risk.

To help protect your kids from inappropriate content on the internet, check out our Screen Safety Essential Course. This program offers access to weekly parent and family-oriented coaching videos that will help you to create safer screen home environments and foster open communication all while connecting and having fun as a family. Dr. Bennett’s coaching helps parents make more informed decisions about internet safety and educates families so they can use good judgment when encountering risks online.

What is COPPA?

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires websites to get parent’s permission before collecting identifying data (like a kid’s name or address) or the cookies from the computer the child is using for children 13 and under. Cookies is a term for a type of data packet sent from a website to a computer and the computer returns the packet to the website. These data packets are a way for websites to track a user and record their actions on the site. Any company caught violating COPPA may be fined up to a maximum of $42,530 per violation.

COPPA applies to any website that is aimed at children or has an audience that can include children such as:

PBS Kids
Sesame Street
Nickelodeon
Cartoon Network

How did YouTube break the law?

In 2015 YouTube created a secondary website and app called YouTube Kids dedicated to content for children ages 12 and under. YouTube makes the bulk of their revenue by selling ads and gathering customer data. Customer data is valuable to marketers because it helps them better target advertisements. YouTube Kids gathered child customer data using cookies without parent permission. This was a violation of COPPA. As a result, YouTube received a fine of 170 million dollars.

YouTube marketed itself to advertisers on its popularity with children and made millions of dollars on the subsequent revenue. This led to a surge in kid-oriented content creators who made quick and easy-to-produce videos to capitalize on the profitability of these new advertisers. For example, toy unboxing videos became popular because it was an easy to produce video that generated a lot of views. These content creators are also violators of COPPA because they capitalized on YouTube’s violation for profit.

What has YouTube changed?

The good news is that YouTube no longer collects your children’s personal identifiers and will not allow advertisements that attempt to collect them either. YouTube along with the FTC have also cracked down on content creators who intentionally abused the ad revenue system by mass producing content while YouTube was still collecting kid’s data. Those channels were reported by YouTube, reviewed by the FTC, and channels found guilty were then fined for their own COPPA violation.

YouTube also has guidelines to limit what can be advertised to children. For example, YouTube does not allow advertising of any kind of food or beverage to children. YouTube has also added content filters that are meant to catch content that is oriented at kids and ensure that any advertisement that can collect your data can’t show up on those videos.

But kids are still viewing inappropriate content

The bad news is that the YouTube advertisement system isn’t perfect. YouTube may not be able to target advertisements at your child specifically anymore, but they can still target advertisements at children using videos marked as for children on their main site, or using their secondary site YouTube Kids. YouTube has extra guidelines for kid-oriented advertisements. However, YouTube does not regulate video content in the same way they regulate advertisements. For example, YouTube won’t allow a thirty second ad about Kool-Aid on their platform if it’s aimed at kids, but Kool-Aid can make a channel and post videos that are essentially an advertisement dressed up like an entertaining video for children. If you’d like to learn more about how advertising affects your children, GKIS already has an article detailing just that linked here.

What does this mean for your child on YouTube?

YouTube has put better practices into place after the COPPA fine. That doesn’t mean that their business model is any different. YouTube is still a website that makes the majority of its money off of advertisements. The website may not be collecting your child’s data but their attention is still a commodity being sold. Content on YouTube can be fun and even educational for children, but you have to be careful of what content your kids are watching.

What can you do to protect your kids on YouTube?

Check what your kids are watching

If you check in on what your child is watching every few videos then you can be sure that they haven’t slipped into watching advertisements dressed up as videos.

Familiarize yourself with your child’s favorite creators

Check a couple of their videos and make sure their content is something you want your child to watch. It will also allow you to be sure this content creator isn’t advertising anything to your children in their videos.

GKIS how to spot marketing supplement

Here at GKIS our how to spot marketing supplement will help teach your kids about the strategies marketers use, and will help them identify when a video is really an advertisement in disguise.

GKIS social media readiness course

Bennett’s social media readiness course helps to teach your kids how to be safe online and recognize the risks on social media sites and found in gaming.

Thanks to CSUCI intern, Jason T. Stewart for researching YouTube’s COPPA fine and co-authoring this article.