12. "Fan Sites Settle Children's Privacy Charges"

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/technology/fan-sites-for-pop-stars-settle-childrens-privacy-charges.html?_r=1&ref=business

On October 3rd, Natasha Singer wrote an article on how a web site for popular young stars like Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez had to pay $1 million to settle charges because the site contained too much personal information on the thousands of children that regularly attended that site. The Federal Trade Commission said that the owner of the site broke a law and collected too much personal information such as addresses and telephone numbers without adult supervision. The law states that all personal information needs to be authorized through the consent of the parent if the child is under 13. The sites have now been shut down. The sites allowed children to become members providing their birthday without parent approval which is breaking the law. The F.T.C. has made new laws in which they are trying to get approved. However, it will hurt companies like Facebook and Apple. The chairman for F.T.C., Jon Leibowitz said that marketers need to understand that no matter how much a child under of age of 13 may love Justin Bieber, that it is not allowed to collect personal information with the parents permission. One site even sent an email to the parent of the child saying that if they did not approve of this site to click so. But even if the parent clicked that they did not approve, it still did not deactivate the site. Artist Arena, the owner of the sites, agreed to delete the personal information and display links to the Federal Site. 

This article is a way of informing the parents of children under the age of 13 to be careful with all the access to the computer they let their children have. The internet world has become a dangerous place and they do not know the importance of it yet. They will put down their address and phone number which can possibly harm them in the future by someone else seeing this type of information. So Singer suggests that the parents should be with the children when they access the computer and should always receive their approval first before becoming a member to a site.