科技公司有多了解你孩子 Veronica Barassi: What tech companies know about your kids

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Every day, every week, we agree to terms and conditions. And when we do this, we provide companies with the lawful right to do whatever they want with our data and with the data of our children.

Which makes us wonder: how much data are we giving away of children, and what are its implications? I'm an anthropologist, and I'm also the mother of two little girls.

And I started to become interested in this question in 2015 when I suddenly realized that there were vastalmost unimaginable amounts of data traces that are being produced and collected about children. So I launched a research project, which is called Child Data Citizen, and I aimed at filling in the blank.

Now you may think that I'm here to blame you for posting photos of your children on social media, but that's not really the point. The problem is way bigger than so-called "sharenting."

This is about systems, not individuals. You and your habits are not to blame.

For the very first time in history, we are tracking the individual data of children from long before they're bornsometimes from the moment of conception, and then throughout their lives. You see, when parents decide to conceive, they go online to look for "ways to get pregnant," or they download ovulation-tracking apps.

When they do get pregnant, they post ultrasounds of their babies on social media, they download pregnancy apps or they consult Dr. Google for all sorts of things, like, you knowfor "miscarriage risk when flying" or "abdominal cramps in early pregnancy." I know because I've done itand many times.

And then, when the baby is born, they track every nap, every feed, every life event on different technologies. And all of these technologies transform the baby's most intimate behavioral and health data into profit by sharing it with others.

So to give you an idea of how this works, in 2019, the British Medical Journal published research that showed that out of 24 mobile health apps, 19 shared information with third parties. And these third parties shared information with 216 other organizations.

Of these 216 other fourth parties, only three belonged to the health sector. The other companies that had access to that data were big tech companies like Google, Facebook or Oracle, they were digital advertising companies and there was also a consumer credit reporting agency. So you get it right: ad companies and credit agencies may already have data points on little babies.

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