#kids-harms

Here are breaches of trust, safeguarding, privacy and law. They expose kids to risks of online harm and discrimination.

Charities and public services must not share kids or encourage kids to share their troubles with social media and ad systems.

Social media only allow sites to use their embeds if sites respect terms regarding age limits, parental consent and data collection.

Had these organisations paid attention to the terms, they may have realised that what they were doing was wrong.

If you are distressed by any content, please seek support. The Samaritans are available on 116 123.

Evelina London (Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust)

What Is The Trust Getting Wrong

Evelina London offer advice pages for kids going to the childrens' hospital that the trust runs

One such page is Young people > Coming to hospital

The page has a video on it.

The video content is hosted using YouTube embeds and therefore directing the children to the online harms risks of YouTube.

The embeds were not using YouTube's privacy enhanced mode. Thus, from a privacy perspective this was a worse situation than the Childline situation currently.

As a result of this, identifiable data was being sent to YouTube revealing that a child is involved in hospital care.

Furthermore, the YouTube embed asks the child to "Watch on youtube.com" when they hover over the YouTube icon and the video title takes the child to YouTube. Thus the embed the trust chose, is encouraging the kids to go to YouTube, where they are then at risk to the online harms risks outlined on the NSPCC article on this site.

Raising the complaint

11th January 2023: The charity and ICO were informed of the data breach and safeguarding failure.

The complaint included an

Screenshot of YouTube tracking of Evelina's site

Is it fixed?

When last checked, no

Raising the complaint

12th January 2023: The DPO and ICO were informed of the safety and data protection failing, with example screenshots to show their consent flow was inappropriate and YouTube was collecting identifiable data about the kids.

26th January 2023: Updated the complaint regarding this page Young people > Feelings and fears that suggests to YouTube a child's mental state (sadness and loneliness), also that they may be in for a lengthier time in hospital.

Their response

12th January 2023: An automated receipt arrived regarding the complaint.