Monitoring children's web use backfires

AP report that software used by parents in the US to monitor their children's web use (brand names Sentry and FamilySafe) is also collecting data about kids' IM conversations, which it is selling to advertisers to assist their targeting. Ugh. There is an opt out for parents but it's not exactly obvious (you could imagine particularly not to an over-anxious, not very web literate parent). There's a sort of irony in this, given current sentiment about over-protective parenting on the web. But it still sounds unacceptable.

[via Boing Boing]