What's great is that the Common Knowledge site violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which mandates that any site collecting personal information on a child under the age of 13 must get verifiable consent from a parent. While Common Knowledge claims to be in compliance with COPPA, I was able to register as a 12 year-old (First name: Vulnerable, Last name: Child Address:123 TouchMe Way). Registration requires a name, an address, a phone number, a date of birth, an email address, your school name, and your extra-curricular interests just to take an online quiz. While I was required to add my parent's email address, the site never sent an email to that address, let alone complied with the law requiring the site to get a parent's verifiable consent. The site's legitimacy is only burnished by having its domain registered to a post office box and running Yahoo! ads on the front page.
This is brilliant since any child going through the scavenger hunt should have learned never to give any of this information out, so the way to finish the scavenger hunt is not to finish it. Pretty sneaky, FBI.
27B Stroke 6:
Filed in: irony, FBI
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