Kids ’ and teens ’ e-privacy at stake?

Young people are increasingly using different applications of the internet. In this context, they are commercial targets for advertisers, especially on websites designed for this tar-get group. During their visits to these websites, personal data are often collected in an explicit manner (e.g. using electronic forms), as well as in an implicit manner (e.g. using cookies, click stream analysis). To protect the informational privacy (i.e. data protec-tion) and the relational privacy (i.e. in this domain the right not to be contacted by com-panies by a.o. e-mail for marketing purposes) legislative initiatives have been taken in the European Union (e.g. European data protection directive (95/46/EC)). Institutions have made specific recommendations to protect children online (e.g. the Belgian Privacy Commission and the Internet Observatory). In order to check whether legal obligations were observed and recommendations applied, an online questionnaire was developed to analyse 294 Belgian websites mainly targeting kids and teens. This analysis shows that a majority (eight out of ten) collects personal details of the young visitors. Only a mino-rity (four out of ten) summarized some legally mandatory information in a privacy sta-tement. Moreover, the phrasing of this explanation is often not adjusted to the target groups of the websites. 1