Real-time positioning, video calls, community interaction… Children’s smartwatches have become essential smart hardware for kids due to their rich and powerful features. However, due to the special nature of child users, the hidden concerns behind children’s smartwatches have also attracted widespread attention. The “Guidelines for the Protection of Personal Information and Rights of Children Using Smartwatches” (hereinafter referred to as the “Guidelines”) officially came into effect on March 11, 2024. The Guidelines provide recommendations for manufacturers of children’s smartwatches from aspects such as informed consent and rights protection, guardian control, and online information content security. So, can the non-mandatory Guidelines provide a new solution to issues such as personal information protection and preventing inducement consumption caused by children’s smartwatches?
Concerns Behind the Intelligence
In recent years, with the development of artificial intelligence technology, children’s smartwatches can achieve call noise reduction, smart voice, dual-frequency positioning, and load various apps such as the children’s version of WeChat and games, and even have payment functions, making them akin to a miniature smartphone. The market scale has exceeded 10 billion yuan. However, with the enhancement of functions and the expansion of market scale, issues such as functional redundancy, inducement consumption, and invasion of personal privacy have become increasingly prominent.
“Previously, we tested a popular children’s smartwatch. We disguised a malicious program download QR code as a lottery game QR code, and when children scanned it with the watch, the malicious program was implanted into the device. Engineers could remotely control the watch to collect the child’s location information, listen to call records, and spy on videos,” said Liu Hang, an engineer at the Cybersecurity Center of the China Electronic Technology Standardization Institute. To cut costs, some manufacturers have opted for older versions of operating systems that lack security hardening, resulting in apps on the watch obtaining sensitive permissions such as location, phone number, microphone, and camera without user authorization, posing significant risks to children’s safety.
“I worry that my child might add strangers by just tapping the watch,” said Ms. You from Beijing. “I sometimes find my child chatting with kids whose names I don’t recognize. It’s possible that someone is using the children’s watch to randomly add minors for chatting.” Ms. You believes that parents need to be vigilant about features like tapping and adding friends, as children have little discernment ability and can easily be deceived.
The Jiangsu Consumer Rights Protection Committee previously released a consumer survey report on children’s smartwatches. The data showed that 17.11% of consumers reported experiencing personal information leaks from children’s smartwatches, and 32.89% expressed a desire for measures to enhance the information security of these devices.
“Currently, the market for children’s watches is mixed, and parents find it difficult to distinguish between good and bad. From data from various authoritative institutions, ‘3·15’ exposés, and the most concerning issues for parents, the problems are concentrated in three main areas: privacy leakage, inducement consumption, and insufficient restrictions on entertainment content,” said Zhou Yuliang, the safety compliance director of Xiao Tian Cai Watch.
Mechanisms for Information Protection
How can we strengthen the protection mechanisms for children’s personal information and rights? Ms. You believes that pre-installed applications on children’s smartwatches must be approved by parents.
“For minors, the main pain point of smart terminals is controlling functions,” said He Yanzhe, one of the drafters of the Guidelines and the deputy director of the Cybersecurity Center’s Testing Laboratory at the China Electronic Technology Standardization Institute. “Whether it’s personal information, usage duration, or content issues, parental control is necessary. After all, current children’s smartwatches are too intelligent, with too many functions, which can lead to unsafe information leakage or channels for inappropriate friendships. Additionally, excessive functions can easily lead children to become addicted to the internet.”
“To address these issues and promote the industry to get back on track, a standard with enforceable measures needs to be established,” He Yanzhe said. “Whether it’s preventing addiction, protecting personal information, or preventing excessive consumption, after assessing various children’s smartwatches on the market, the Guidelines compile good practices into a collection, then articulate them in standardized language to become a common reference for everyone.”
According to reports, the Guidelines combine newly issued regulations such as the “Regulations on the Protection of Minors Online” and the “Guidelines for Building a Minor Mode in Mobile Internet”. They set specific chapters targeting children’s personal information security, guardian control, and online information content safety for children’s smartwatches; they also emphasize the management of children’s smartwatches by guardians and establish a dedicated chapter on “Guardian Control”, detailing requirements for application installation control, function control, time control, and social control, aiming to provide manufacturers of children’s smartwatches with comprehensive, clear, and easy-to-understand Guidelines for easier implementation.
The Guidelines stipulate that children’s smartwatches with information exchange and publication functions should provide convenient features for children and their guardians to save records of online bullying incidents and exercise their notification rights; if the number of child users exceeds 100,000, a dedicated channel (or sub-channel) for reporting online bullying should be established; a one-click bullying prevention function should be implemented to mark accounts suspected of participating in online bullying and include them in classified management.
Working Together to Eliminate Pain Points
At a specialty store in Beijing’s Xinjiekou Xinhua Shopping Mall, children’s smartwatches occupy a prominent position, with prices ranging from hundreds to thousands of yuan. Sales staff told reporters that today’s watches, like smartphones, have added many artificial intelligence features and different hardware configurations, resulting in a wide price range.
“The functions attached to children’s watches are increasing, which may lead to children comparing themselves with others. For example, if someone else’s watch has a camera function or is a high-end model, my child might ask for a more expensive one or one with certain features,” Ms. You said. “Children’s smartwatches help kids establish social circles, but they can also easily lead them to conform to peer pressure and be influenced by the crowd.”
“Parents’ core needs are positioning and communication; other functions are supplementary,” Zhou Yuliang believes. To address parents’ pain points, manufacturers must follow the strictest standards to regulate their product lines.
Parents’ concerns about features like tapping to add friends are seen by He Yanzhe as a process of tug-of-war. “For instance, a parental control feature could be set for tapping to add friends. When parents enable this feature, adding friends would require parental authorization. However, children might not want parents to enable it, or parents might not know about this feature, or children might disable it on their parents’ phones.”
“Control features need a unified industry standard and model,” Zhou Yuliang believes. For example, when using children’s WeChat, according to legal requirements, if third-party apps are used, children’s friend additions and chat content must be reviewed. This requires manufacturers to establish their own review mechanisms and recognize different manufacturers and software, which currently does not exist. For parents, both the chat contacts and content need monitoring, but due to different prevention and control strategies from different manufacturers, and the differing standards of third-party applications and manufacturers, some monitoring may be missed, and current content review can only achieve a superficial level. “It is actually very difficult to control third-party apps,” Zhou Yuliang said.
To meet the legal protection requirements for minors and ensure that guardians can use them with peace of mind, leading manufacturers should strive for a unified standard and model. “In the current situation, extra caution is needed when making purchases,” Zhou Yuliang said. “For instance, check for electronic product 3C certification, internet access certificates, and model approvals; these qualifications are essential. As platforms can be traced, warranty and exchange policies should also be in place.” (Wu Xiaoli)
Source| China Consumer News
Reviewed by| Mu Xin
