How old are you? (Page 1 of 32)

Oh! Happy birthday! I liked being 18.

I'm a quarter of a century - 25

16 that age were you can do anything and blame it on your parents.

I am twelve.

Are you aware that it is technically illegal to join an online community until you are 13 unless your parents sign and fax a form to the admin? Well, that is if you live in the United States anyway...

http://www.coppa.org/

I always assumed it meant what your parents want private. For example, they might want his age to be private or something... Even if it wasn't like that though, I beleive the administrator aquires your IP address and email address when you register. With an IP address, someone can find out your exact location.

It is probably because (as I said before) it is against US law.

First and foremost, to clear up any confusion, the posted Rules clearly cover our stance on Privacy: "BFFC respects your privacy. BFFC will not sell your information to advertisers."

Second,  IP address records reveal your web provider, not necessarily you. They're recorded here for moderating accounts and throughout BFFC with features like the online poll, in conjunction with cookies to remember your preferences.

Third, with this web site and any others, use your best judgment.

As you can see in the news, even major web sites are prone to privacy issues, either in clumsy programming or aggressive hackers. If anyone is still worried, educate yourself. Just Google it or read this CNET.com article, for example, on privacy.

Nah, Aaron's just telling you how it is

Actually, no. It is not for a particular forum, but an entire forum service (Forum service meaning things like IPB, and phpBB, and punBB, but the particular one was InvisionFree...) which has rules against that kind of stuff. (That stuff being the innapropriate pictures and all that) One site I saw realised this one day and banned every member who was under 13 unless they abided by the COPPA terms.

And to respong to the administrator... Sorry, I did not recognize that they could not find your exact location. I had always heard it was like that. But even still, that doesn't stop the law.

"Websites that are collecting information from children under the age of thirteen are required to comply with Federal Trade Commission ( FTC ) Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)."

But I beleive the rule does not only mean information the child wants private. I was reading through the COPPA page, and it says this:

"The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and Rule apply to individually identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full name, home address, email address, telephone number or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact the child. The Act and Rule also cover other types of information -- for example, hobbies, interests and information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms -- when they are tied to individually identifiable information."

It also says this:

"The kinds of personal information collected from children (for example, name, address, email address, hobbies, etc.) and how the information is collected -- directly from the child or passively, say, through cookies."

((Oh yeah, and here is a more reliable link to the COPPA information...

If you just mean having my parent's okay to be on here, not, say, e-mailing the administrator, I have that.