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Groups Urge Tech Firms To Stop Advertising To Under-18 Children

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UK MPs, academics, and children’s rights advocates are urging tech firms to stop advertising to under-18 children. The groups sent an open letter addressed to Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft according to BBC.

 

“The fact that ad-tech companies hold 72 million data points on a child by the time they turn 13 shows the extent of disregard for these laws, and the extraordinary surveillance to which children are subjected,” the letter read.

 

European data protection laws prohibit the mining of data from young children. “There is no justification for targeting teenagers with personalised ads any more than there is for targeting 12-year-olds. You, the most powerful companies on the internet, have a responsibility to protect your users,” the letter also read.

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23 signatories were named in the letter urging the companies to stop advertising to under-18 children. Amongst them: MP Caroline Lucas, clinical psychologist; Dr Elly Hanson and Friends of the Earth.

 

Global Action Plan coordinated the open letter action. Global Action Plan argues that online advertising accelerates consumerism, which in turn adds unnecessary pressure to the planet.

 

Separately, YouTube is accused of unlawfully mining data from five million under-13s children in the UK. Privacy advocate Duncan McCann representing the five million British children against Google. McCann claims Google broke privacy laws by tracking children online, breaching both UK and European data protection laws. However, YouTube will most likely argue that the platform is not for children under the age of 13.

 

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