Half of the websites and apps share information about children
The Privacy It is an essential right of every person who, in some cases, takes risks. Many websites or mobile applications do not ensure privacy or security of data on the Internet and, in fact, share information of its users. This is the case with half of the world's websites.
An international project that has analyzed a total of 1,494 web pages and applications from around the world has found that 67 percent of them collect personal information of children, and that half (50 percent) shared it with other organizations, something that represents an immense danger.
From the data collected in this study carried out by the Global Network for the Reinforcement of Privacy (GPEN, in English) it is extracted that 31 percent of the pages analyzed have effective controls to limit the collection of information staff of the children, and that half shared that personal information with third parties.
Also, 22 percent of the websites I asked the children to give their mobile phone, while 23 percent let them upload videos or photographs. On the other hand, 58 percent of these online portals offered children the opportunity to redirect to a different web page, as explained in Global News, which has echoed this investigation.
Other data extracted from the analyzes indicate that only 24 percent of the portals included in the sample encouraged parental participation, while 71 percent did not provide children with the methods to erase information from their accounts.
On these important data, which give a global idea that how other websites work in the world, technology expert David Papp explains to the aforementioned Canadian media that many websites and mobile applications they need the personal information of their users because they use them to direct the advertisements and to verify that, in effect, the user is of legal age to use said application.
Education on safety
In this sense, this expert mentions a maxim remembered by many other professionals: the need to educate our children about online security and privacy. Papp's first advice is clear: "teach your children to be open with you".
"Depending on the age of the child, the computer should be in a common area in the house where you can see it, maybe in the kitchen or living room, not in private rooms ", advises this expert when talking about the methods to teach children methods to protect themselves from lack of security on the Internet.
Another important issue when educating children in this matter is teach them to ask themselves if the website really needs to know that information and what could be done with it. "The problem that exists with generations of young people is that they treat social networks in a context of popularity," laments this expert, who mentions that most young people do not know all the people with whom they are connected in these networks. and that this is something that can be "very dangerous".
This information that children and adolescents share on the Internet every day could "hurt" them with the passage of time in two ways: on the one hand, by the access of third parties to information that is private and, on the other, by "funny" images of young people who, although they may seem "dumb" at a certain moment, pass by to be part of the fingerprint of young people.
A moment of reflection
Every day more people are aware of the danger that can involve sharing their private information on the Internet, because This can be used by third parties with other objectives. Information like this study should make parents reflect: why would organizations want to know so much about my son? What are the potential benefits and risks for my child? How could I better control my children's information?
However, the study (which does not provide the complete list of websites analyzed or which were those that least protected the rights of children) has also found that There are some pages that do provide effective protective controls, such as those designed for parents or systems that protect children to avoid, by mistake, they themselves sharing their personal information.
Angela R. Bonachera
