\u201cAs noted in the Terms of Use, we do not knowingly collect or solicitPersonal Data about children under 13 years of age; ifyou are a child under the age of 13, please do not attempt to register for orotherwise use the Services or send us any Personal Data. Use of the Servicesmay capture the physical presence of a child under the age of 13, but noPersonal Data about the child is collected. If we learn we have collectedPersonal Data from a child under 13 years of age, we will delete thatinformation as quickly as possible. (I don\u2019t know that this is accurate. Do wehave to say we will delete the information or is there another way aroundthis)?<\/strong> If you believe that a child under 13 years of age may have providedPersonal Data to us, please contact us at\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A short time after contacting Telly for comment, the company removed the section from its privacy policy.<\/p>\n

In an email, Telly chief strategy officer Dallas Lawrence said an old draft of the privacy policy was uploaded by mistake.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe questions raised in the document between our developer team and our privacy legal counsel appear a bit out of context. The issue raised was a two-part technical question related to timing and whether or not it was even possible for us to be in possession of this kind of data,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cThe team was unclear about how much time we had to delete any data we may inadvertently capture on children under 13. The term \u2018quickly as possible\u2019 that was included in the draft language seemed vague and undetermined and needing [sic] further clarification from a technical perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawrence said its developers did not believe it\u2019s possible to capture personal data on children under 13, adding that minors are \u201cnot allowed to register\u201d with Telly.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the only red flag in the policy itself. According to the policy, some of the data it collects is sensitive, like precise geolocation. The television also collects names, email addresses, phone numbers, ages and dates of birth, zip codes, gender and ethnicity, and \u201csex life or sexual orientation\u201d (which Telly quietly removed after this article was published).<\/p>\n

The startup says it also collects your \u201ccultural or social identifiers,\u201d such as what sports team you might like (\u201ca Green Bay Packers fan\u201d), what physical activities you enjoy (like \u201cbeing a skateboarder\u201d), but also things like if you\u2019re \u201can environmental activist,\u201d the policy states.<\/p>\n

While it might not be surprising that a free, ad-supported product is collecting vast amounts of information about its users, there are dangers in collecting this data to begin with.<\/p>\n

Ad networks collect gobs of information from various sources \u2014 websites, phone apps, and ad-supported hardware \u2014 to build up profiles about users that can be used for targeted advertising. The more that ad networks collect, the more they can infer about you, and the more they think they can accurately serve you ads that you\u2019re likely to click on and make them money.<\/p>\n