Channel One has had a sad and disturbing history of violating the privacy of children. To the credit of those in charge of Channel One currently, great strides have been made in improving this situation.
Just a few years ago, Channel One was urging children to send in their pictures so they could be posted on the Internet. Obligation made them stop that.
Channel One also had chat rooms where children were asked by Channel One for personal information such as name, address, phone number and a description of themselves. Channel One told the kids that this information was going to be available for Internet users. Fortunately, Channel One stopped this at Obligation’s insistence.
Although Channel One has ended these and other abuses, there appears to be a new push to obtain information from children via contests on ChannelOne.com.
Below is Channel One’s latest Privacy Policy. It will be useful to refer to later on. Privacy policies are usually difficult to understand because what a statement DOESN’T SAY is often more important than what it DOES SAY.
Here is a simple rule of thumb: The longer the Privacy Policy is, the more invasion of privacy.
A children’s site like ChannelOne.com should simply say: We will ask for no information from any visitor. One has to remember that Channel One is a marketing company. They need demographic information. They need to get information from children then publish it in their “Channel One Teen Fact Book” and then make big money off of telling advertisers what children really are thinking.
Obligation will keep a close watch on Channel One. Privacy issues will be a major concern facing them especially if they enter the interactive world of computers in classrooms.
