This weekend, renowned tech analyst Charlene Li was horrified to discover that her 9-year-old daughter had posted a conversation to Google Buzz, not realizing it was public — or that someone with the handle “iorgyinbathrooms” was following her.
Li immediately kicked her daughter off her Google account, then wrote a lengthy post about how dangerous Buzz can be for children in part because its privacy controls are so tricky to navigate. (Jessica Guynn of the L.A. Times talked with some privacy experts about Li’s situation and Buzz here.)
Google was quick to get back to Li. It explained that Gmail’s terms of service explicitly outline that no one under age 13 is allowed to have an account. It also told her that a “long list of improvements is on the way” and stressed that it’s exploring new ways to ensure child safety. Li, who’d apparently unthinkingly input her own birthdate when setting up her daughter’s Gmail account — posted the updates here.
Some good has come from the debacle, aside from raising greater awareness around Buzz’s privacy loopholes. Today, Li decided to use the attention to share the steps that she and her husband employ to keep their kids as safe as possible online. For example, one rule on which they insist is that YouTube be watched only from a PC in their kitchen. They also use K9 Web Protection software from Blue Coat Systems to monitor everything their kids view and use. Meanwhile, Li’s favorite software, she says, is TimezUpKids, which limits their online time to one hour a day.
Li acknowledges that there’s “no such thing as perfect, full-proof parental controls for the Internet, short of sitting down with them and watching every keystroke.” (By the way, Li and her husband used to do exactly that.) Still, she suggests the tools have gone a long way toward helping her maintain her sanity. “I love [the monitoring software] because it removes my need to constantly tell [my kids] to get off the computer!” she writes.
One also gathers that though the “Google Buzz issue has been resolved,” according to Li, her kids won’t be using it again any time soon, and not simply because they’re in violation of Gmail’s terms of service.
