Signing up under 13's - slight hiccup

[energizer61]

Gday Guys,

While Trying to assist my 11 Y/O Son (cachingdynamo) to sign up to GCA, I wondered why we was asked whether he was over or under 13? I soon found out.... the reply email explained it's a result of the COPPA Act...

good to see you are doing the right thing & getting Parents permission, but the form I am supposed to complete & return states;

Welcome to Geocaching Australia Forums

In compliance with the COPPA act your account is currently inactive.

Please print this message out and have your parent or guardian sign and date it.
Then fax it to:



OR mail it to:

no details of where to fax or mail it to????

can you update the reply bot & give me somewhere to send the form to please?

thanks Guys

[energizer61]

me again,

I'm not complaining or anything (I know it probably sounds like I am), I just think this needs tidying up, trying to help by notifying you guys of a slight problem,

Just as an additional note,

If I was a concerned parent (which I am), & my Child had signed up without my knowledge, & received the same email (with the consent form), shouldn't any details of my childs account be blocked from being viewed by all & sundry until the consent form had been returned?

I noticed after posting this topic, the newest member is Cachingdynamo, with a clickable link to his Profile, with all the information viewable that the permission form said wouldn't be accessible until I returned it with my permission (you know the one, the one that I haven't returned yet because I can't)

So, If I haven't returned the form giving permission to GCA to Store the information, why is it displayed for all to see?

I haven't got a problem in this case, since I assisted him in completing the info. but I can see it could be a problem for others.

Think this needs fixing up.

thanks Guys

[embi]

Please be patient. i! will see this soon and I'm sure they will fix it up.

[riblit]

I just googled the COPPA act, its an American act that seems to be directed at commercial websites that provide services for children.
http://www.cdt.org/legislation/105th/privacy/coppa.html is one reference.
the definition of operator is:
2) OPERATOR.—The term "operator"—

(A) means any person who operates a website located on the Internet or an online service and who collects or maintains personal information from or about the users of or visitors to such website or online service, or on whose behalf such information is collected or maintained, where such website or online service is operated for commercial purposes, including any person offering products or services for sale through that website or online service, involving commerce—

I'm not sure that it covers this website as it is not operated for commercial purposes. The reference in the signup would be there because the bbs code was written in America.

[energizer61]

I don't know whether the Act applies or not, doesn't matter to me,

but, & please correct me if i'm wrong, IF you are going to have a sign up process that involves me signing a form to say I give permission for this information to be stored, It shouldn't be viewable by everyone until that permission is granted. should it?

sounds logical to me

Like I said earlier, don't take me the wrong way as i don't have any problems with the information we have provided, I'm just pointing it out to avoid problems that may arise

[riblit]

I thought from your two posts in reasonably quick succession that you were concerned by this. i! are currently not available to look at the bbs code. It could take a while to track down as it is a freeware package that was adopted for use, and, being written in America it has a reference to the COPPA act. With all the other updates in the development queue it could take some time to track down the relevent section of bbs code.

edit.

google helped with the location to add an email address so I've done that. There doesn't appear a configuration setting to disable it for non commercial or non US boards.

[Cached]

I filled out said form a while ago for CachedScout and DevilRacerRyan and never heard anything back. I PDF'd it and sent it in.

[energizer61]

I thought from your two posts in reasonably quick succession that you were concerned by this. i! are currently not available to look at the bbs code. It could take a while to track down as it is a freeware package that was adopted for use, and, being written in America it has a reference to the COPPA act. With all the other updates in the development queue it could take some time to track down the relevent section of bbs code.

Not overly concerned, just trying to help

the only concern I have is that until this is sorted cachingdynamo appears to be the only person unable to log in to view his own profile (or more importantly & the whole reason for all this, so he can log a GCA find) that everyone else appears to be able to see but shouldn't be able to see it yet. (did that make sense? lol)

BTW.. whats BBS code? means nothing to me

[riblit]

the only concern I have is that until this is sorted cachingdynamo appears to be the only person unable to log in to view his own profile (or more importantly & the whole reason for all this, so he can log a GCA find) that everyone else appears to be able to see but shouldn't be able to see it yet. (did that make sense? lol)

BTW.. whats BBS code? means nothing to me

You should have received an email to the address you listed as the email address for cachingdynamo with a link to visit to enable the login. This is automatically sent by the bulletin board software when the registration form is filled in. It's designed to ensure the person that registers uses a live email address that he/she can access. The account is inactive until you visit that link.

I have activated the account and made cachingdynamo the caching name as well as the login name so you can log the cache.

This forum is an application called phpBB, from http://www.phpbb.com/, by BBS code I was refering to the codebase (the php code that runs it) for the Bulletin Board.

[energizer61]

You should have received an email to the address you listed as the email address for cachingdynamo with a link to visit to enable the login. This is automatically sent by the bulletin board software when the registration form is filled in. It's designed to ensure the person that registers uses a live email address that he/she can access. The account is inactive until you visit that link.

I have activated the account and made cachingdynamo the caching name as well as the login name so you can log the cache.

Thanks for activating the account, we would of done it ourselves via the activation email - if we got one, but we didn't.... all we got in reply was a form to send to no-where. hence the reason for starting this thread

[ideology]

hi energizer61,

as riblit says we are running forum software which was developed for USA users. when installing it, it asked for our fax numbers, email and postal addresses and we left them blank. sorry it's led to this situation. it could well be that the bug you are raising has been fixed in a later release of the software, however we have modified this version with cacher names and stuff so we are kind of stuck with an older version of the software unless we make the patches manually. we've put on the list to change the COPA page. the workflow might be hard to change but we might be able to change the text of the message to avoid confusion.

riblit, thanks for activating the account, and thanks for adding an email address, however we have removed our email address because we are concerned that it will be crawled by spammers harvesting email addresses.