Hacker News Reader

Comment by sjroot | Hacker News Reader

Based on Google’s documentation on supervised accounts [1], sounds like your child is/was under 13?

They don’t have these checks in place for the fun of it. They’re usually legally mandated, otherwise some parent will sue them because “Google exposed my child to X Y or Z”

[1] https://support.google.com/families/answer/7106787?hl=en

View on HN

The issue isn’t with the registration, which is another issue altogether. It’s with them tracking the behavior somehow and then deducing their age to such confidence that they threatened to delete their account in 14 days. It wasn’t a guess.

And yet they are so fallible in their other forms of detection like fraud that lock people out of their accounts. The entire thing is creepy and maddening at the same time.

Most likely your kid was asked their age to access something and was honest.

It's a bit unfortunate that we need to teach our kids to lie to service providers to be safe.

We don't. This is the exact opposite of that, children are breaking the law and possibly exposing themselves to things that will be harmful to them when they access the web without adult supervision, google is attempting to force parents to take some responsibility for their children.

And what is that harm that Google allegedly protects the kids from? Because the harm it causes to them - losing access to service - has been explained above.

You're being incredibly combative and I don't think it would be productive to have any further conversation.

If explaining that this "feature" doesn't increase anybody's safety sounds combative to you, then I agree, it wouldn't.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com