Sites for children gather more user data than sites for adults, claims WSJ

Use of the web is monitored by a variety of technologies that track behaviour and communicate it to advertisers and publishers. Some tracking takes place across sites whose only link is the advertiser or advertising network being used.

The most common tracking device is the cookie, a small text file stored within a user's web browser which details the user's surfing activity and can be read and added to by sites. Flash cookies, advertising 'beacons' and other device-specific tracking systems are other ways in which user activity is collected and communicated to advertisers and publishers.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) looked at the material placed on a test computer when visiting 50 sites popular with children, as ranked by a media analysis firm. It compared the tracking behaviour of those sites to that of the 50 most popular sites for a general audience.

"As a group, the sites placed 4,123 'cookies,' 'beacons' and other pieces of tracking technology [on the test computer]," said the WSJ story. "That is 30% more than were found in an analysis of the 50 most popular US sites overall, which are generally aimed at adults."

Most of the tracking tools belong to advertising networks or other third party companies rather than the actual publishers of the web content, the WSJ's investigation found.

The WSJ found that some companies which collected the information of teenagers and offered it for sale had initially denied doing so. One was selling a database of information on 5.9 million people it described as between 13 and 17 years old. The company later admitted to the paper that it was marketing that information.

The investigation is part of a series that the WSJ is publishing on the collection of web users' data and the use of that data by advertisers.

The UK's Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) revised its guidance on the collection of data on children this year. The rules now say that data must not be collected on children under 12 and collection from those under 16 must not include the collection of data about third parties.

Marketing companies which are members of the Direct Marketing Association are bound by its Code of Practice. That Code was also revised this year to forbid the collection of data from the under 12s. It also now mirrors the CAP Code's prohibition on collecting information on other people from those under 16.

The DMA's Code was changed to ensure that rules for online collection of children's data were the same as rules covering non-internet collection.

DMA director of legal and public affairs Caroline Roberts told technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio that companies publishing material that children might be interested in must take account of the rules governing data collection.

"I think if you know you are dealing with children or with young people, you do have to make sure that you are treating them appropriately and even if your site is not primarily aimed at young people, if there is a possibility that it would be attractive to them, again you have a responsibility," she said.