As careful readers will note, I am not the poster of my posts. I depend on the good offices Ethan and Dan to actually get my words to screen. Herein lies a story, a mystery and hopefully a solution.
Dan sent me a link to set myself up an account as a guest-blogger. The system asked me the usual password/name questions, and then went on to get personal, asking my sex and age. I was clicking through in a hurry and not paying attention, and did not select a year from the pull down menu; the default year was 2009. So the system was informed that I was born yesterday.
This created a problem. I received an error message saying that I could not be given an account since I was under 13. Efforts to log on from other email accounts did not work; it appears to recognize my computer.
So they’re serious about this 13 thing. Interestingly, other blogging programs I’ve used have not been interested in my age.
The question is – why 13. I can understand why for liability purposes a platform may wish to ensure users are adults. Prawfsblawg may be a cover for tween sexting and worse.
But the age of majority is 18, and I believe the age of consent in all states is at least 14. I don’t know of any special legal or technological significance of 13.
Or does TypePad know more than one would think? If I were Catholic, would it ensure that I was at least seven years old?
I’d be indebted to anyone who knows how to fix this problem.
Posted by Ethan Leib on May 14, 2009 at 07:06 AM
Comments
Why under 13? COPPA: http://www.coppa.org/comply.htm and 15 U.S.C. 6501(1)
Posted by: Paul Ohm | May 14, 2009 10:04:13 AM
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act 1998 (COPPA) defines ‘child’ as a person under 13. See http://www.coppa.org/coppa.htm
Websites providing services to ‘children’ have significant responsibilities under the Act, which they can avoid if they only provide services to people who are aged at least 13. It appears to me that the functional effect of the law has been to restrict access to most interaction-based sites, like blogging sites, to those who are at least 13.
Posted by: pedr | May 14, 2009 9:51:58 AM