Disney's privacy lawsuit shows it's valid for kids to use VPNs

It’s a small world after all. Without a VPN, a huge corporation on the other side of the world might have a whole profile drawn up based on your child’s online habits, designed to help advertising algorithms show them the ads that they’ve determined have the highest chance of making them want to buy something – and now we know that Disney helped them with it. I guess we’ve always known that it was molding young minds.

As a result of a court settlement, Disney has to pay $10 million after showing children targeted ads and collecting data on them through YouTube. This was caused by Disney uploading a bunch of videos designed for kids, but not labeling them as “for kids”, which is essential for negating targeted ads and data collection. Of course, it’s impossible to know whether this was an intentional ploy or a genuine mistake caused by people being unfamiliar with YouTube and/or privacy laws related to children (though the fact that this was noticed across 1,250 different Disney-owned channels suggests the former). Either way, the damage is done.

The timing of this settlement is quite ironic, because in the UK, lawmakers have voted to change the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools bill so that VPNs cannot be used by anybody under the age of 16. The logic behind this decision is that with VPNs, young people can circumvent the restrictions on “adult” content and therefore may end up accessing stuff that can be harmful to them. It’s coming from a place of good intentions, but ultimately, I think there are lots of things that haven’t been considered.

I’ve already talked about some of my concerns about this change in the law, but this Disney story just goes to show that children’s data is not safe on the internet. Though Disney has had to pay a huge settlement, it doesn’t change the fact that probably millions of kids will have had their data recorded and used to send them targeted ads. I have no doubt that there’s another mega corporation out there right now extracting data from kids (legally or illegally) as you read this article.

You might think, “Oh well, it’s just some adverts, what harm can it do?” But actually, the extent of the data collected and the ways it is used are very sinister. If a child has spoken to a friend online about feeling insecure about their weight, they could be served adverts for fitness or weight loss products, feeding their insecurities further. If a child is worried about acne, the ad algorithms might start feeding them adverts for skincare products. It’s not just “Oh, this person likes Mickey Mouse, let’s show an ad for Mickey Mouse toys”, it’s an interconnected web of data being taken, sold, and bought, so every platform knows everything about every person.

The best VPN services, like NordVPN, Proton VPN, Surfshark, CyberGhost, or ExpressVPN (basically, any of the non-dodgy ones) offer one of the few reliable ways for kids (and people in general) to protect themselves from this invasive practice.

If you’re after a VPN, our top recommendation is NordVPN. If you’ve not used a VPN before and want to test it out, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee that gives you a nice window of time before you’re locked in.