Hell No Barbie
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) plans to launch a “Hell No Barbie” campaign on social media and its website, warning parents and children to keep their distance from the doll.
“This is kind of the perfect storm of a bad toy,” said Josh Golin, the group’s executive director.
His organization argues the Wi-Fi connected doll — which is equipped with a tiny microphone — could act as a double agent, passing on personal information shared by your child for marketing research or nefarious purposes.
Some parents are also suspicious of the toy. “Hello Barbie is pretty creepy and it would not be welcome in our house,” said Windsor, Ont., parent Mindy Terrington.
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Golin and his co-campaigners worry about hackers infiltrating children’s dialogue, which will be stored on a server. They also dislike that the recorded conversations will be monitored at times to improve the system.
“Having people listen to recordings [of children]talking intimately to a doll raises a whole host of questions,” said Golin.
A big concern is that information gleaned from conversations might be used for marketing purposes.
“Clearly this is going to be a trove of valuable information when you have a child talking perhaps for hours with a doll,” said Golin.
– Ibid.
Considering the fact that the NSA actively spies on nearly 100% of citizen communications, isn’t it obvious that the information collected by this doll could easily end up in the same databases?
If you value your privacy and do not want your children to be monitored by faceless entities, you definitely need to say Hell No Barbie.
