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Comment by muuh-gnu | Hacker News Reader

> Parent logs into his/her account, parent creates kid's account, parent states real age (10 years), parent expresses consent,

How do you prove that it's the kids parent thats giving this permission and not a random adult the kid asked to pretend being his parent?

> Why is that parents can't give consent to their young (<13y/o) child using Google account?

Because the parents probably have to provide written proof and it costs Google money to process such non-automated requests. You basically have millions of children below the age of 13. If everybody wanted to sign up their kids, Google would have to hire people to do nothing else than to just process the written or faxed permissions. Its way easier and cheaper to just exclude pre-13s from the service.

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> How do you prove that it's the kids parent thats giving this permission and not a random adult the kid asked to pretend being his parent?

In the same way they "know" the kid is 13 because he happened to select that from a pop-up menu somewhere.

That is to say, why should that proof require rigor that doesn't exist in the original html form that got him into this mess in the first place?

So if I fat-finger my birthday when setting up google+ I'm going to have my gmail shut down until I can somehow prove to them I just messed up?

Weak.

How does every other freaking kids' site do this? You're telling me Google is incapable of figuring that out?

The only evidence they have he's less than 13 is his honest answer to their question. The only evidence the law holds them to is billing the parents a dollar, or really, just the assertion that they're an adult. Microsoft manages this for their online properties. Why can't Google? Because Google doesn't care to.

> How does every other freaking kids' site do this?

They generally get fined.

Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pro...

This is the law.

How do you prove that a user enters the real date of birth when creating an account?

You don't, but the chain of responsibility is short. You gave a fake age, that is against the rules, your account is suspended for that plus being underage in the first place.

Managing and auditing a longer chain of responsibility, and setting up the rules for what happens if something in the chain becomes known to have been false, can be a royal pain both technically and legally (particularly when you consider that different countries have widely varying laws regarding who can be responsible for what, what rights there are to start with and what you can sign away, and so forth). The complications can multiply up very quickly once are considering more than one entity (the one that sets up the account and is claiming to be doing so truthfully), and once you allow chains like that you could have a chain of many people who each vouched for each other and each could be fake in some way.

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