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ISPs Cannot Ensure Children Below 13 Are Barred From Social Sites
The Government has been officially told that Internet Service Providers (ISP) will not be able to ensure that underage users are prevented from accessing Social Media sites.
ISPs have told the Government that they do not have any means to check if the user is underage and hence cannot prevent them from accessing Social Media sites.
Why are ISPs asked to verify the underage criterion? The Delhi High Court had sternly asked the Centre to clarify the laws it had, for protecting children from being abused via social networking sites. The court was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) that said minors were allowed to open an account with social networking sites, including Facebook, which was illegal as Indian laws don’t permit it.
Incidentally, sites like Facebook and Google have specific rules to ensure that disbar kids under the age of 13 to access their platforms, but there are easy ways to circumvent these policies as there is no physical verification involved. Hence child abuse cases are alarmingly common occurrences as these gullible and impressionable minds are often lured by people with ill–intentions.
The Indian Government certainly cannot direct these internet companies as they are not governed by Indian laws or in other words, these companies are out of India’s jurisdiction. Hence the only party left, that can be arm–twisted, is the ISPs. However, the companies have collectively refused. The Internet Service Providers Association of India has written to the Department of Information and Technology expressing its inability to implement the order. Their official statement via a representative of the Internet Service Providers industry was,
“It is for the social networking companies to implement the court order. How can ISPs, which are only providing connectivity, know who is opening an account on Facebook and other platforms,”
Facebook and Google both have grievance officers for addressing complaints. They do have the authority of suspending accounts if the court submits a written request. But in a country like India, it would be a gargantuan task to ask the same for each underage account. So the question of prevention of underage access to Social Media sites, still lingers.
Source | Business Line
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Source: http://www.watblog.com/2014/04/01/isps-cannot-ensure-children-below-13-are-barred-from-social-sites/
