互联网儿童个人信息保护机制构建研究——从“监护人同意制度”的角度切入

Research on the construction of children’s personal information protection mechanism on the Internet---From the perspective of“guardian consent system”

互联网时代的来临,促使各国立法者考虑对儿童个人信息采取倾斜性保护。纵观各国监护人同意制度,可分为严格限定模式与适龄保护模式。其中,美国《儿童在线隐私保护法》与英国《适龄设计守则》分别在监护人同意的“可验证性”和儿童保护的“适龄性”方面的做法值得进行重点考察与借鉴。相较之下,我国现行的监护人同意制度以固定年龄为界限进行划分没有适当依据,导致了儿童网络保护的法律空白,忽视了儿童对自我决策权的需求,更不符合网络行业实践;笼统的制度设计在忽略儿童主体性的同时又过度期待了监护人理性,对监护人同意的真实性也缺乏有效的核实方式。因此,应当学习英美经验,逐渐由严格限定模式向适龄保护模式转变,调整年龄划分,细化监护人同意制度设计以改善其局限性,进一步促进儿童个人信息保护。

The advent of the Internet era has prompted legislators in various countries to consider adopting tilted protection of children’s personal information.Looking at the guardian consent systems in various countries,they can be divided into strictly limited models and age-appropriate protection models.Among them,the US“Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act”and the UK“Code of Practice for the Age-Appropriate Design of Online Services”respectively address the“verifiability”of guardian consent and the“age-appropriateness”of child protection,which are worth focusing on and learning from.In comparison,our country’s current guardian consent system uses fixed age as the dividing line without proper basis,resulting in a legal gap in children's online protection,ignoring children's need for self-decision-making rights,and not in line with the practice of the Internet industry.Furthermore,over-general design ignores the subjectivity of children and excessively expects guardians to be rational.There is also a lack of effective verification methods for the authenticity of guardians'consent.Therefore,we should learn from the experiences of the United Kingdom and the United States,gradually transform from a strictly limited model to an age-appropriate protection model,adjust age divisions,refine the design of the guardian consent system to tackle its drawbacks,thus further promote the protection of children's personal information.