Xanga hit with $1M fine
Xanga fined $1 million under child-privacy act:
Xanga has been hit pretty hard in the wallet by the FTC over child privacy concerns…
Xanga.com, a social-networking and blog site, has been ordered to pay $1 million in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
The FTC said in a statement Thursday that Xanga, which has been in operation since 1999, had been letting people create accounts even if the dates of birth they entered indicated that they were under the age of 13. The terms of the child-privacy act, enacted in 1998, stipulate that parental notification and consent are required for a commercial Web site, including a social-networking service, to collect personal information from children under the age of 13.
In addition, the FTC alleged that Xanga’s policies regarding children were not sufficiently clear on its site and that parents were not provided a means to access and control their children’s information. It is estimated that over the past five years, a total of 1.7 million Xanga accounts had been registered with a birth date that implied the person was under 13. Overall, privately held Xanga has 25 million registered users.
In response to the settlement, Xanga CEO John Hiler said in a statement that many of the 1.7 million “under 13″ birth dates may have actually referred to pet birthdays, engagement dates and “born-again” dates for religious bloggers. Nevertheless, Hiler’s statement also announced that Xanga is initiating new rules and standards to make the site better attuned to child safety.
I just now tried signing up for a Xanga account as if I was under 13. Once I put in the birthdate it wouldn’t let me go any further. That’s not to say someone couldn’t use a fake birthdate to sign up. However after you sign up and you try and change your birthdate to under 13 it will tell you that your account needs to be deleted but relies on the user to delete the account.
Having said that I think this fine from the FTC is a load of crap. Again it comes down to parental responsibility. Parents need to be more responsible for their kids’ behavior on the internet. And what about parengts whose kids are under 13 who they allowed to go on Xanga? Why aren’t they being fined?
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POSTED IN: Law
1 opinion for Xanga hit with $1M fine
soobs
Sep 10, 2006 at 11:26 pm
It’s so ridiculous because as you said, anyone can input a fake birthdate!
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