Children are spending more time online than ever before. And they’re getting there sooner. According to UNICEF, around the world, a child goes online for the first time every half second. Whilst being online comes with a host of benefits like learning and expanding imagination, there is a dark side of the internet that we don’t want our children to see.
Companies like Yoti are building age estimation tools to combat this and they need our help. They have successfully developed and trained their age estimation tool to accurately identify the ages of humans over 13 through facial scanning. However, they need to extend this to children under 13 to make it more difficult for children to access areas online that are not age-appropriate.
Now, if you are hesitating, we completely understand. There have been some cases where facial recognition companies have used children’s images without their consent. We disagree completely with the misuse of peoples information. Yoti respects that, and Dial a Nerd (in partnership with Be in Touch) has done the research and fully trusts Yoti and how they deal with privacy. You don’t need to give names, ID numbers or anything. All Yoti requires is that you as the parent or guardian of your child uploads the image, prove you are over 21 using their facial recognition software, confirm your child’s date of birth and submit the photo.
Yoti stores the image and age information securely in a Research & Development (R&D) server which is only accessible to their R&D team who carry out the work to develop and improve our age estimation technology. They keep the information for as long as it is relevant for this project with a maximum retention period of three years.
You also can request that your child’s photo is deleted even after you have uploaded it. You can contact Yoti at datadeletionrequest@yoti.com with the reference number given to you to delete all data.
What’s more, is for every photo shared with Yoti, a R20 donation will be made to Olivers Village, a sustainable community development project in the East Rand, Johannesburg.
