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According to Paizo's Privacy Policy children under 16 need a parent/guardian's permission to create an account. If you put in a birthday that would make the account younger than 16 you have to put in a parent/guardian's e-mail as well as the child's.
Beyond that, it's just a matter of who the parent trusts with the account. There's no way to designate someone else as having read/write access to parts of an account; they would have to actually give out the login information. The good news is that I don't see anything in Paizo's policies banning that. I would just get an e-mail from the parents saying something like "I'm letting (real name of NN959) take care of the online stuff at Paizo.com associated with PFS for (child's name)." You don't want to create such an account without a parent's permission.
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Paizo's minor account management requires signed letters, not just email confirmation.
Sigh, I'm sure there's some legal corporate CYA reason for that. In any event, can you link that policy, Rob? I can't find anything searching those terms.
I was just thinking of it in personal terms, not what eventualities Paizo might be concerned about. Like if I asked you to log into my account (the password is "p@55vv0rd") and take care of some things while I didn't have internet access, an e-mail stating that you were doing it at my request would be sufficient in any sane world.
Paizo's minor account management requires signed letters, not just email confirmation.Sigh, I'm sure there's some legal corporate CYA reason for that. In any event, can you link that policy, Rob?
Here's the relevant COOPA section
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It seems that as long as I don't provide any personal information of the children in the profiles, I wouldn't need any written authorization from the parents.
You can't/shouldn't be creating accounts for someone without using personal information because name and date of birth can't be changed after the account is created.
You create an account for Bob Bobson whose date of birth is 10/4/2007 using the pseudonym Fred Fredson with date of birth 9/10/1982, assign a PFS # to Fred Fredson, accrue AcP as Fred Fredson, and now Bob Bobson's Organized Play card reads "Fred Fredson."
Assuming Bob wants to control his own account when he ages up, he probably doesn't want to explain to every event that knows him as Bob Bobson why he's using Fred Fredson's card nor make a new account under his own name and DOB under his own control and lose the AcP accrual.
EDIT: A better plan would be to print out the Welcome to OP Cards to give each of them a unique OP number then provide the parents with instructions on setting up a Paizo account so they can manage their AcP, if the parents want to. If, after that, the parents want you to manage their children's AcP, they can write a letter and provide you with the log in details.
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I found it attempting to create a minor account recently.Paizo's minor account management requires signed letters, not just email confirmation.Sigh, I'm sure there's some legal corporate CYA reason for that. In any event, can you link that policy, Rob? I can't find anything searching those terms.
That explains it. I just put in a birthdate that made me nine years old; I didn't go any further down the account creation path.
We still may be talking about slightly different things, though. If I'm following you (and CrystalSeas' COPPA link) properly, the signed letter is required to be provided to Paizo by the parent in order for the account to be created. Once the account is created, nothing is physically (thought perhaps something is legally) stopping the parent from simply giving the name/password to another person without involving Paizo.
This might be one of those voids that will never get a Paizo comment and fall into "don't ask, don't tell." I strongly suspect that the official answer is that only the parent is allowed to access the account. I'm in favor of this in general terms. The downside is that the kids are now locked out of a lot of the OP material unless the parent is willing to dedicate the time to do the ACP/boon buying.
Another casualty of the move to paperless. I know how hard OPF has pushed for Kid's Track and similar initiatives in the past, so this may need to go in the hopper of potential website upgrades. Allowing the parents/guardians to give a third party limited access to a child's account. Just to see and manage characters, not to see personal info.
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This seems like a simple matter of the parents creating an account for their minor children and either helping them manage it, or provide the login info to the organizer of their kid's games to manage for them. That way no one is inconvenienced and the kids get to benefit from the rewards program.
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This seems like a simple matter of the parents creating an account for their minor children and either helping them manage it, or provide the login info to the organizer of their kid's games to manage for them. That way no one is inconvenienced and the kids get to benefit from the rewards program.
That is the practical solution, and is what I was suggesting in my first post. I strongly suspect that from a legal standpoint if Paizo was to say anything on the subject they would have to say "only parents are allowed to access the account." Silence is much more likely.
You should definitely ask for something in writing from the parents saying that they were authorizing you to access the kids' accounts.
A "designated administrator" function that allowed a parent to designate another user the ability to manage characters but not to access any personal information is a potential workaround to keep that shield intact. Is it worth the programming effort? Eh, I don't know. I do know that Organized Play has been big on encouraging youth to play.
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First, you may not use your real name or date of birth, but the minor for which you are making an account may have opinions about how they want their account to look when they're older.
Second...
It's unrealistic to expect the parents to manage this as they will have little to no understanding of the game and be unable to provide any guidance to the child. If I really expect the Boon/ACP to be a part of this endeavor, I would undoubtedly need to print out all the available boons and explain them. In addition, I would need to know who had what boons so they could select them prior to each session.
As a professional guardian of children, it does not matter how realistic is may or may not be to expect a parent to manage their child's online account. However, they are the parent and they should have as much say as they want on their minor children's online presence. No matter your personal feelings on the matter.
As a parent, I would be extremely troubled to find an adult of any relationship to my child had made an online account linked to message boards and purchasing functions for my child.
Not every parent would care. But you owe the parents the respect to give them the choice to decline the account creation, take responsibility for it themselves, or delegate that authority to you. You don't simply take that authority from a parent.
As a parent, I would be extremely troubled to find an adult of any relationship to my child had made an online account linked to message boards and purchasing functions for my child.
That is sufficient for someone with "mandatory reporting" requirements to make a report, whether or not the parents care.
That would be, for example, a teacher overhears the kid telling a friend that they had an online account that some games store made for them. That kind of grooming behavior can put you under some serious scrutiny.
Notice that reality is not the issue. The issue is whether or not a child tells someone something that triggers mandatory reporting. Or if the child gets angry at you and wants to get you in trouble.
I would not make an online account for a child under any circumstances. I'd send home a sheet of how the parents can do it. I'd offer to come to their house and do it for them from their computer.
If I were a gamestore owner, I'd forbid it and ban any GM who did. And if Paizo had to provide records and give law enforcement access to their data bases, I can see them taking action as well.
Organized Play Manager
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All minor accounts on Paizo.com must be made by parents/guardians of said minors. Doing otherwise violates Paizo TOC. The rules of paizo.com exist to protect younger members of society and we will not support activities that seek to circumnavigate these protections.
There are some workarounds that do not involve breaking the rules:
People without paizo.com accounts can be issued a paper card with a number and will accrue AcP for each game played.
Encourage parents to take an interest in their child's activities. Send home a paper with directions on how to make an account and what benefits the youth gets is the first step.
Alternatively, if parents can't/don't want to navigate the site, they can identify desired purchases to the OP team via the reporting errors email (pfsreportingerrors@paizo.com), then we can manually purchase items on the account and distribute copies back to the parent on behalf of the child.
In the worst-case scenario, the points will accrue until the child can/wants to make an account.
Have/have-nots in every scenario, not just at youth tables. That isn't something the program is equipped to address. The AcP and boons are an additional system, not the game. Previously, youth not attending conventions or special regional events wouldn't have had boons to use.
For the boons on chronicles, they can be printed out and shared at the table with manual tracking.
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This, of course, assumes that minors, who are often more adept at using the internet than their parents, aren't smart enough to just lie about their DoB and create their own account anyway. I have no data to support it, but I would guess that there are more of these than minor accounts owned and operated by their parents.
