FBI Pairs With Website Violating Law To Make Kids Safer

[Ian David]

by Ryan Singel and Kevin Poulsen
Friday, 20 October 2006
FBI Pairs With Website Violating Law To Make Kids Safer



The FBI has set up a masterful site called Safe Online Surfing to help kids learn how to use the internet safely. Via a scavenger hunt, children get to learn that it's okay to talk about Disney characters online, get online safety tips from the Miami Dolphins website and take an Internet test at the Common Knowledge Scholarship Foundation.

Now, what's great isn't that the final Internet quiz actually tests you on whether you know how to become an FBI Special Agent (Sample question: What do you say to a female applicant who says she's not strong enough to bust down doors?)

What's great is that the Common Knowledge site violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which mandates that any site collecting personal information on a child under the age of 13 must get verifiable consent from a parent. While Common Knowledge claims to be in compliance with COPPA, I was able to register as a 12 year-old (First name: Vulnerable, Last name: Child Address:123 TouchMe Way). Registration requires a name, an address, a phone number, a date of birth, an email address, your school name, and your extra-curricular interests just to take an online quiz. While I was required to add my parent's email address, the site never sent an email to that address, let alone complied with the law requiring the site to get a parent's verifiable consent. The site's legitimacy is only burnished by having its domain registered to a post office box and running Yahoo! ads on the front page.

This is brilliant since any child going through the scavenger hunt should have learned never to give any of this information out, so the way to finish the scavenger hunt is not to finish it. Pretty sneaky, FBI. Schools that do really good on the test get a visit from a professional football player, which makes sense, because nothing says online smarts like a 6', 230lb linebacker sitting in your school's cafeteria.

More:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2006/10/fbi_pairs_with_.html