Edu-apps may be STALKING YOUR KIDS, feds warn The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning parents after the discovery of possible user-tracking activity by educational software for children. The commission said that some children's education software, such as that marketed by China-based BabyBus, appears to be collecting locational data from users and possibly …
Are you fucking kidding?
When my kids were small (early 1990s) there was no Internet but we were lucky that video recorders had been invented. I had every episode of Rod, Jane and Freddie. Better than heroin!
Press play, walk way and get back to my life...
"Check what information the app collects. Look at the app’s permissions to see if the app shares location, photos, contacts or other personal information," the FTC advises. "If it does and you don’t want your child’s personal information shared, then don’t download that app."
Or in a sane universe, the FTC could review apps targeting minors and require them to remove any such tracking mechanisms. In the physical world, making something available that may entice someone into harm falls under the definition of "attractive nuisance." How is setting up this sort of situation logically any different? Yes, parents should be involved enough to check things of this nature, but the government's assumption that even a sizable portion of the population understands what is actually being asked of them is, well. evil.
Parents are ultimately responsible for their children, unless you want to give them up at birth and have the State raise them.
'The Government should do something about it' is not parenting but you are right, much of the population has no clue, the majority of people I know, until I have mentioned it were unaware of the need to look at and question the permissions that apps ask for.
Perhaps ALL TV channels should be required to show public information ads about internet and App security.
"Perhaps ALL TV channels should be required to show public information ads about internet and App security".
That's not a bad idea. Especially the channels specifically provided for children.
You could also make it age sensitive, as there is a clear difference between channels provided for pre-school, pre-teen and teenage markets.
Run them as public information films, like they used to for road safety or stranger danger.
How about these brain numbing soap operas take a break from murder, theft, adultery etc for an episode or three and highlight the dangers of those ipads you bought your kids this Xmas. I don't know; maybe a RATter stalks a teenage girl and kills her by bashing her over the head with a surface pro 3, or one of the protagonists hatches a scheme to defraud and there's a scene with gchq bods looking through all their selfies on their iPhone and finding their accomplices by scraping their Facebook data and catching them using their phones' GPS.
Whether you know it or not, the federal Department of Education wants to track all children and have them in a "Human Capital" or Das Kapital database. This is part of the Common Core rubbish being pushed on state and local school boards. To learn more, search for one of Michele Malkin's wonderful columns on the subject.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
