Child related businesses are extremely lucrative on the Internet. Companies make millions of dollars selling many different products and publications related to kids.

The flip side to running any business related to children is that they are a protected constituency and, especially when it comes to information, any business owner must keep up with the regulations and be sure they are in compliance with all the privacy regulations.

I just read an interesting article about a web monitoring company that sells a service to help parents monitor their kid’s activities in private chats using instant messaging software.  This company sells information revealed in these chats to other businesses and it is now getting some bad publicity about this practice.

While they claim they get this permission in the agreements with parents (likely hidden in the fine text of legal terms), it is pretty clear that parents are not aware of this.

As a lawyer, I advise based on the laws that do exist to protect children interests from the negative vices of the Internet. . . but as a parent, I believe that all of us, including the capitalists inside of us, has an ethical obligation to restraint from doing anything that could harm or exploit children.

Here is the link to the article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32694224/ns/technology_and_science-security/