Children seen but not heard: When parents compromise children's online privacy

Children's online privacy has garnered much attention in media, legislation, and industry. Adults are concerned that children may not adequately protect themselves online. How-ever, relatively little discussion has focused on the privacy breaches that may occur to children at the hands of others, namely, their parents and relatives. When adults post infor-mation online, they may reveal personal information about their children to other people, online services, data brokers, or surveillant authorities. This information can be gathered in an automated fashion and then linked with other online and offine sources, creating detailed profiles which can be continually enhanced throughout the children's lives. In this paper, we conduct a study to see how widespread these behaviors are among adults on Facebook and Insta-gram. We use a number of methods. Firstly, we automate a process to examine 2,383 adult users on Facebook for ev-idence of children in their public photo albums. Using the associated comments in combination with publicly available voter registration records, we are able to infer children's names, faces, birth dates, and addresses. Secondly, in or-der to understand what additional information is available to Facebook and the users' friends, we survey 357 adult Face-book users about their behaviors and attitudes with regard to posting their children's information online. Thirdly, we analyze 1,089 users on Instagram to infer facts about their children. Finally, we make recommendations for privacy-conscious parents and suggest an interface change through which Face-book can nudge parents towards better stewardship of their children's privacy.