I remember when I made my first Yahoo Mail account at 12. I ran into the COPA filter that asked how old I was, and I noticed that if I changed the year, I’d be through and wouldn’t have any trouble signing up.

So I did.

We’ve spent a lot more time than I’d like to admit working on, near and around EdTech. One thing that has always bothered me has been the public conversation about student data.

I’m not sure that it’s possible to avoid advertising to students, without a robust targeting schema to identify those students. Once you have a target you can exclude, it’s very easy to make sure that you aren’t collecting data inappropriately.

While mechanisms like the COPA Age Verification promise to fix the problem, they’re not exactly…impenetrable solutions.

I’m not sure what the answer is here, but I think we’ve got to get better