Brands could get caught up in the kids data crackdown

Industry Contributor 11 Nov 2019 - 4 min read

Brands could get caught up in the kids data crackdown

By Teresa Davis, Associate Professor, Marketing - University of Sydney Business School

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Using online marketing to profile children is an ethical area that is increasingly being legislated against. Two cases this year have shown that jurisdictions are willing to take the tech behemoths to court. Facebook's $5bn fine and Google’s breach in collecting profiling data from children using YouTube, show that the Federal Trade Commission in the US has decided to enforce rules around the protection of children’s privacy online. In Europe, under GDPR, children's online privacy is increasingly under surveillance.

Key points:

A greater will by watchdogs in both US and Europe to target tech companies that collected personal data from child users without parental consent
That children were not the primary target of these platforms is no longer an excuse
Online marketers using these platforms need to protect themselves from liability by being individually responsible for the content within which their advertising is embedded

In the eyes of the law, ignorance is no defence - and in any case, lawmakers and enforcers are no longer buying it. Both YouTube and Facebook have pointed out that consumers are meant to be 13 years or older to use their platforms. However, the FTC, insisted that they are well aware that many parts of their platforms carry content particularly attractive to children below this age.

This inconsistency can be traced to the historical way the platforms evolved. Early versions were only available to adults, but given this has changed, tech platforms need to reassess how they provide content to child consumers and how they collect personal information. Marketers who place content on both these platforms sometimes have little idea about the content within which their ads appear. Google's YouTube has had problems with paedophiles commenting on family videos. Google promotes the fact it has vast child viewers in their audiences to advertisers, but when caught out claims it is not deliberate in its targeting of content or placement of ads.

The latest breach and the $170 million fine, apparently does not serve as a deterrent. Rohit Chopra, the Commissioner of the FTC pointed out this was Google’s third big breach of this nature since 2011, and the fine barely dented Alphabet’s $30.7 billion annual profit. The ‘price’ paid for this illegal harvesting of child consumer data appears worth the return, with FTC deputy director, Katharina Kopp, suggesting the fine was almost a reward for the illegal harvesting of such data. YouTube has launched its own children’s platform, YouTube kids, which requires parental consent regarding personal data collection, however this does not stop children from accessing YouTube proper.

The dangers of such harvests become clearer when as Emily Wilson writes in The Next Web, children’s identities and Social Security data are being advertised for sale on the Dark Web. Identity fraudsters can use underage data to build 'synthetic profiles', complete with Social Security numbers, then build up credit lines and amass debt, unknown to the child until apply for a loan or credit card and find they have a bad credit history.

The unintended consequences of harvesting children’s via video game in app purchases etc., could be potentially crippling for the child concerned. Marketers have a duty of care to be ethical about this and national watchdog agencies are increasingly tightening the rules. Some, such as the UK's Advertising Standards Authority, are using online avatars of children to monitor advertising on children's websites.

If they are willing to make an example of giants like Facebook and Google, marketers that advertise with them could easily become caught up in fallout.