ATLANTA — Our personal information is being collected every day on every device we use. But it is not just our information companies collect, our kids are also being tracked.
Parents are the ones who have got to step in and stop it.
Dolls that allow strangers to listen in, criminals gaining access to your kids through video games, and now companies using the microphones and even the keystrokes on your child’s device to collect personal data.
Haley Viente is pretty strict when it comes to what her son Blake can do with his devices.
“Being a mom to a 15-year-old teenager can be very overwhelming,” Viente said.
“I’ll see my friends doing things and I won’t be allowed to do it, so it’s kind of frustrating sometimes,” social media user Blake Maiden said.
Maiden said that while he’s not as tech-savvy as most of his friends he does use social media without putting too much thought into what information is being collected.
“In the back of my mind, I can see how, like, maybe that’s a little nerve-wracking or a little scary, but on a daily basis, I’m not worrying about it,” Maiden said.
We asked the mother-son duo to figure out what the apps on Blake’s phone had permission to do.
“So he has one, two, three, four, five, five apps that are listening to him,” Viente said.
Then we had them look up the privacy policy for one of those apps to see just how Maiden’s info is being used.
“For the detailed answer. Go here. So, there’s somewhere else to click,” Viente said.
Security researcher Willis McDonald told us it’s on you the parent to search these polices for answers.
“Even though they’re saying they’re not doing one thing with your information in a whole separate section, it basically negates that,” McDonald said. “There are a lot of complicated privacy policies out there.”








