The Wall Street Journal has been doing a great series of articles on how aggressively websites track your online behavior, and a recent installment discussed the data being collected on our kids. Did you know that on average, more tracking tools are being installed on kids’ computers than are being used to track their parents’ web behavior? Over 4000 different pieces of tracking technology were installed by different sites during the Journal’s study!
And while most sites claim the data collected remains anonymous, policies vary and you can bet they use the data to feed ads to your kids.
We’re not going to name names (though the Journal does!), but let’s just say some of the most well-known names in kids’ media are slapping all kinds of cookies and “beacons” on our kids’ behavior. One site that helps kids customize their social space online installs 248 tracking tools! Can you imagine? That’s unbelievable. At Everloop, kids can customize their profile pages ‘til the cows come home, with stickers and badges and backgrounds and music and images – with NO TRACKING TOOLS except what the site requires to identify the computer and retrieve settings. Your child is always anonymous to us and everyone else outside their known circle of friends, and no “beacons” get attached to your kid’s profile that would enable targeted ads to follow your child around the internet --- EVER.
Even our partners -- who provide character images and virtual items kids use to customize their profiles -- have no access at all to private information about your child and cannot follow their behavior. The only data we collect is the minimal amount we need to learn what aspects of Everloop are getting used by kids and which areas need to be improved so that kids get more out of them. That’s it. Nothing that identifies any specific kid to our system or our partners.
Rest assured – when your kids are on Everloop, what they’re doing is up to you to monitor. Not us!
3 comments:
This is great to know! It's hard enough to raise children to be people rather than consumers--we don't need merchants looking over their shoulders everywhere they go and everything they do--that's what mothers are for!
Seriously, Everloop is a great find. I'll send my grandson there, next time he wants to use my computer.
Marian Allen
Seems to be a cool tool.
Really Angelic
I know tracking tools are everywhere, but had no idea there were several thousand, and potentially hundres on a single site. It's great to know Everloop is a safe site for my kids. Thanks, Hilary for the information and mission of Everloop! ~~Keith
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