The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, act as legal, financial or credit advice; instead, it is for general informational purposes only. Information on this website may not be current. This website may contain links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser; we do not recommend or endorse the contents of any third-party sites. Readers of this website should contact their attorney, accountant or credit counselor to obtain advice with respect to their particular situation. No reader, user, or browser of this site should act or not act on the basis of information on this site. Always seek personal legal, financial or credit advice for your relevant jurisdiction. Only your individual attorney or advisor can provide assurances that the information contained herein – and your interpretation of it – is applicable or appropriate to your particular situation. Use of, and access to, this website or any of the links or resources contained within the site do not create an attorney-client or fiduciary relationship between the reader, user, or browser and website owner, authors, contributors, contributing firms, or their respective employers.
Credit.com receives compensation for the financial products and services advertised on this site if our users apply for and sign up for any of them. Compensation is not a factor in the substantive evaluation of any product.
There isn’t a holiday season that goes by that most parents aren’t treated to the seasonal joy of caroling neighbors and cajoling children. There’s always something your kids want that you don’t want to give them, whether because it’s too expensive, too mature or too hard to find. But this year, you should seriously consider giving him or her that pricey iPad (or tablet) that adorns many an underage wishlist this year — not for their sake, but for your own.
After all, I think we parents can admit that our kids — even the ones who haven’t mastered long division yet — probably know as well as we do (if not better) how to use our devices, so whatever controls we think we’re setting, we’re probably not — and that’s if we don’t have to ask them to set them for us. But in reality, most of us are as rigorous about installing parental blocks and monitoring programs as we are about securing our smartphones and password protecting our computers — which is to say, not very.
But in the mean time, our iPads and tablets contain a whole lot of data that can be put at risk by little fingers: banking and credit card company apps, shopping apps, even geo-location data on social media sites or pictures that tell our “friends” and “followers” not only who we are, but where we are, what we have and what we’re doing. Giving your tablet to your kid will very likely impact your search history — what your search engine knows you’re looking for and finds out you’re looking at — which can have legal consequences (pirated downloads or illegal imagery, for instance) or it can just annoy you by showing you less-tailored results.
Meanwhile, if a child is under 13, most companies — from Facebook to search engines and beyond — aren’t allowed to offer them accounts or track what they do. (Rep. Joe Barton of Texas and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts recently introduced legislation extend that prohibition to children up to age 15.) So if your little (or not so little) ones had their own iPads and their own accounts, that which can be traced back to you won’t be.
But the solution isn’t to deny your kids access to Angry Birds or whatever educational program you’d like to believe they spend just as much time playing. (Besides, every parent knows that an out-and-out prohibition against anything is more likely to result in extraordinary efforts to do that thing anyway.) Instead, set aside the money and get them an iPad of their very own — and make sure the Genius Bar helps you set up all those parental controls.
That way, your child gets what she or he wants, you get the privacy protections you need and you both get the security of knowing that his or her online behavior won’t impact either of your lives for a little while longer.
At least until they figure out how to download SnapChat.
Image: karelnoppe
October 19, 2023
Identity Theft and Scams
May 17, 2022
Identity Theft and Scams
May 20, 2021
Identity Theft and Scams