How to Turn Kids Into Debt Slaves: Toymakers Busted for Data Mining ChildrenBy Daisy Luther Back in the old days, we learned that if we were jerks to the neighbor kids, wed get clotheslined playing Red Rover. Ouch. But, lesson learned, dont be a jerk or if you are, expect that people will react accordingly. These days, no one is playing anything dangerous like Red Rover or tag. Heck, you could practically get arrested for suggesting such hazardous pastimes. But playtime is still preparing children for a very specific future. Like life in the Surveillance State, for example. Or how to become a consumer debt slave from the moment you begin to earn money.Information that is innocently given away can be used in manipulative and corrupt ways, and now, businesses are targeting very young children and beginning the data collection early. In adark and dangerous corner of the web, there lurks all sorts of bad characters, people who lurk on social media gaining trust and personal details from children for some form of their own perverted gratification. But did you know that some of the folks out there lurking and mining information from your children are representatives of three major toy manufacturers and a childrens TV station? Probably not the image they want to cultivate, but it turns out, its true. You know those toys that you can get your kids that have a cool corresponding website online? The ones where your kiddo can register a dolls birth certificate or where your children can pit their electronic race car results against the results of other kids? Maybe your child can even play learning games there? Those are the ones. Those seemingly harmless and innocent sites are data-mining information from your kids, and stashing it away to use later. The owner of the Nickelodeon TV network and three well-known toy makers have been found guilty after their websites were found to contain tracking technology. Other websites are still being investigated over the same allegations. And let me tell you, the judge sure cracked down on these companies that make literally hundreds of millions in sales each year. What theyre doing is very similar to what those store loyalty cards do. Theyre figuring out your childs interests and then targeting them as consumers. In our buy, buy, buy society, were all oxen being put in a consumer yoke that leaves us deeply in debt, enslaved to our jobs, and in search of our next shopping fix. And data is the tool theyre using to harness us to this machine. Of course, for companies like these, the fines are laughable. $85??? Seriously? The take-home lesson here is that something had to be done, but what they did was an insult to concerned parents everywhere. The judge in charge obviously doesnt care in the least that a) laws put in place to protect children were violated and b) these children have been data-mined and that information is out there. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said: Now children live online and we have to police the internet as we seek to police our streets, I dont want there to be a dossier on any child that can be used later to scam them. In the United States, its illegal for websites aimed at children under 13 to have any means of gathering information on the sites users unless parental permission is sought and granted. None of the websites investigated had complied with this law. Dont worry, though. Theyve learned their lesson. They promise. All four of the businesses have signed a legally binding agreement to monitor their sites to ensure that childrens details are not kept and to make sure that they dont fall afoul of the law in future. Even if they had complied, many parents think nothing of signing up children for online educational websites and mindlessly granting permission for their youngsters information to be stored. After all, whats the big deal? Watch this clip to learn what the big deal is. Be careful what information you put out there about your children. All of those fun quizzes on the websites you sign them up to are painting a picture. Right now, that picture is being used to target your kids for marketing Later, as new algorithms are created, who knows what that information will be used for? Some of the information is dark data. That is information that they have no use for now, but it is being stored for a time when it can be used. This story makes me feel much better about my choice to greatly limit electronic toys and games when my kids were little. Of course, back in the olden days when I was raising toddlers, the toys werent attached to the Internet, but still. Books dont spy on you. You have to wonder how often this goes on and we dont know about it. I think if we knew, even the most suspicious of us would be astounded. Most of the ways companies data mine seem so innocent, often fun, and rarely extremely intrusive. But those small bits of information can add up and tell an awful lot about you or your children. Safeguarding our children should be of paramount importance but its impossible to act on something you dont know about or if you dont understand the threat. In the weeks leading up to the Christmas holidays, children across the country will be online looking for the latest must-have toy or game.Make your choices with this story in mind. Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, wherethis article first appeared, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy onFacebookandTwitter, and you can email her atdaisy@theorganicprepper.ca .and then we have Standard Innovations Corp. Currently being sued for tracking users of their Smart Vibrators which are linked to a smart phone as a controller. Chris White from Law Newz revealed that after the Def Con convention geeks demonstrated how this was being done remotely to track your most intimate moments there is a lawsuit against this company that includes many statutes violated even the possibility of hackers causing a technical remote rape by taking over the device. There is a bigger picture. They are eliminating/ demonizing normal child hood activities so that the children wont go trough the normal rites of passage and become fully functional adults. The idea is to make them basket cases utterly dependent on the system. That way they will defend/ strengthen the very system that so massively messed them up and enslaved them. Its certainly good to know when data mining is going on, so one can avoid it if desired, but my own feeling is that Id rather see ads for things Im interested in than ads for things Im not. 