Legal Update: Protecting children’s data

The events of the last 15 months have brought into sharp focus how children and young peoples’ lives are increasingly impacted by the digital environment with their education and social lives moving online. As recently recognised by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in its General Comment No. 25 (2021), an increasingly digitalised world creates both opportunities and risks for children and it is vital that their rights are respected, protected and fulfilled.

That is why Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) joined with civil liberties organisation Liberty and disability charity Inclusion London to intervene in a landmark case that was heard in the Supreme Court in late April 2021. The case was called Lloyd v Google and is a representative claim brought by Mr Lloyd on behalf of 4.4 million iPhone users against Google. The alleged data breach concerned Google’s gathering and exploitation of browser generated information (“BGI”) on Apple’s Safari browser between 2011-12. Lloyd argues that it meant that without consent to that third-party cookie, information was gathered including details of the times and frequency of visits by given devices, their IP addresses and the advertisements viewed, also about such diverse factors as their interests and habits, race or ethnicity, social class, political or religious views or affiliations, age, health, gender, sexuality, and financial position.