To help them meet new friends and develop personal networks, Kidlink offers use of several online meeting places (private and public), web pages, and a contact database.

Kidlink offers related services and support to adults and organizations involved in the growth and maturing of kids, such as parents, teachers, health personnel, youth club staff, libraries, museums, etc. We do not sell products or services to minors. Minors are offered to be co-owners of Kidlink by becoming members of the Kidlink Society, which owns Kidlink.

Kidlink's contacts database

was established in 1990 to help realize the Kidlink network's purpose as provided by The Kidlink Society Articles of Association § 1:

"Its purpose is to promote the creation of a global dialog among the youth of the world."

All processing of registered personal data is made to fulfill this purpose.

Personal data is submitted into our database by the children themselves. It is not done by Kidlink's database administrators, for example, based on texts received on paper. Neither is information electronically extracted from other sources to supplement what is manually submitted.

Children's guardians (parents, teachers) sometimes submit data on behalf of a kid. However, they only rarely tell others when they do so.

Though a defined format and a minimum set of information is required, the children's answers to the registration questions are voluntary. They want to provide personal information in order to meet peers in other countries, and make friends with them. They use the contacts database to find peers of the same age, gender, interests, personal characteristics, vision, conditions, and other types of information used by kids to decide with whom they want to associate.

With the powers of the Internet's search engines, submitting personal data to Kidlink's contacts database does not differ much from making same information available from a personal web page. Retrieving personal information from Kidlink's database is only marginally more efficient than with tools like www.google.com. The special think is our contact database's context, and how it is related to our free educational programs.

It is impossible to make friends without sharing personal information. . We train them in how to submit their responses, and use them to get friends. For example, such training takes place through the How to get friends? series of web pages, and through educational programs like "Who am I?".

The children are provided information about Privacy related to their use of Kidlink. However, because of our purpose, this information is not so important. There are no "secret" messages to be discovered by the kids. All privacy risks related to the use Kidlink are normal risks related to meeting others, to growing up, to living.

Kidlink does not violate the individual minor's right to personal integrity, privacy, nor the quality of their submitted personal information.

Access

Previously, our database was fully open to the general public, and regularly copied to other services on the net for redistribution, like Usenet, so that more kids could use it. It served as an important vehicle for kids, teachers, and families searching electronic penpals for their kids. It is not like this any more. Though no child abuse as a result of their registration in Kidlink's contacts database has ever been recorded, our rules about who has access to the data is changing.

The information in our contacts database serves three purposes:

1. Information used by kids to get in contact with other kids.
2. Information used by Kidlink's approval team to verify that the person is within the target age range, and eligible for access to those Kidlink services that are exclusively for kids. It is also used to protect kids' vital interests, whenever appropriate, and to discover and correct attempts of unauthorized access to the database.
3. Information used by kids' coaches, such as parents, teachers, etc. to support their work with kids. Citizens interested in the thoughts and ways of their coming generation also has a need for information.

   This includes accredited researchers associated with or cooperating with the Kidlink Institute/Research using the database for historical, statistical, and other scientific purposes. KI/R is a department of Stiftelsen Kidlink. It performs and promotes research in Education and related areas of the Human and Social Sciences based on Kidlink's repositories of records of past and ongoing projects.

Database structure

The database contains the following information about each child. This list is sorted by level of access, in three groups, going from the general public, through the kids themselves, to Kidlink's approval team:

The general public

The individual's first name; country; response number; age, gender, information about the person's interests, hobbies, concerns; future plans in terms of work, education, and in general; dreams about a better future; the kid's thoughts about what steps it can take now to realize its personal goals and vision for the world?

Kids seeking contact with other kids

All the above, plus: First name; email address; country of residence; date joined Kidlink.

Kidlink's approval team

All the above, plus last name, birthday (to compare with stated age), City/State, Schoolname, Teacher, Teacher's email, the date of arrival of the response (dissappears upon approval).

Not available to anyone

Password (for access to services that are only for kids);

There are no other applications of the collected data.

The database does not contain other information than what the minor has submitted herself. For example, it does not contain additional information about kids' interests as in a list of Kidlink services being used by the minor.

Discussion

Minors register their information with Kidlink to meet other minors, and develop friendships with them. This opportunity is explained explicitly on our pages for minors. Kidlink's processing of their personal data is principally made to help them achieve this goal.

Minors are not "lured" into registering themselves in Kidlink's contact database under other pretexts.

Kidlink's adult contact database approval team now and again catch signals of personal problems, like indicated wishes to commit suicide, pyromaniac ideas and plans, etc. Using the provided information about place and school, our team members warn local guardians. They also protect the other users from becoming "infected" by ideas about suicide, etc.

The networking dialog between minors - in which Kidlink's contacts database is central - serve several important public interests, including:

• Education. The US Department of Education recommends Kidlink in its "Teacher's Guide to International Collaboration on the Internet." Collaboration is globally recognized as one of the most effective teaching methods for minors. Development of Kidlink's key educational programs, like the "how to meet other minors" program Who-am-I?, was funded by The Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish Ministries of Education. Last year, Kidlink won 1st prize in the Global Junior Challenge's category "Educational projects for users up to 18 years old" in competition with with 600 educational projects from all over the world. Research show that our programs motivate minors to learn the subjects on the local schools' curriculums.
• Development aid: Norad is funding a feasibility study in Angola to set up three telecenters with Kidlink contents (Kidlink Houses). The plan is based on the "Who-am-I?" program, which uses and is built on Kidlink's contacts database.
• Community service: In Brazil, and Mexico, Kidlink operates 30 Kidlink Houses. Some serve poor public schools, other serve minors in a local community, and some serve street kids. One of the objectives of the latter KHouses is to motivate street kids to return to a normal life.
• Preventive mental health: Kidlink has been used for a long time by staff within preventive mental health, starting with the Department of Preventive and Adolescent Health Care at the Medical Faculty, Charles University, Prague, in 1991. Kidlink is working with Arendal kommune and other Norwegian organizations to use the Who-am-I? program in preventive mental health work among minors.
• Anti-racism, anti-violence: Starting in 1991, during the war in the Middle-East, initiatives to use Kidlink's services to build bridges between minors at the two sides started. We are regularly used in similar activities.
• Ethnical minorities: Using the Who-am-I? program, Kidlink actively works to protect the language and culture of ethnical minorities. For example, the program has been translated into Saami, Icelandic, Catalan.

Kidlink holds a justifiable interest in using the collected information to ensure that the minors are getting in contact with their desired peers, to protect their dialogs from pollution by unsolicited commercial disturbances, and from receipt of messages from adults with non-compatible motives.

Parents hold a justifiable interest in parts of the collected information to learn what is on their children's and their generation's minds, their views about life and the future.

Teachers hold a justifiable interest in parts of the collected information to learn what is on their students'minds, their views about life and the future.

Similar justifiable interests are shared by other groups in the society, including mental health personnel, educational authorities, staff at libraries, legal authorities, the general public.

Kidlink's system of internal control

Kidlink's internal control staff only rarely correct, change, or alter records the contacts database - simply because a "good quality" record is one that leads to a contact with another person.

We feel it is improper to handle, change, or in any way correct any of these records unless the registered person has submitted a change request.

The only change in the submitted records done by Kidlink's staff is correction of provided country of current residence. They do this whenever the provided city of residence, name of school, and email address' domain code indicate that the country name is wrong. The kids may update their email addresses whenever they wish, though the initial email is kept for the record.

The child selects country from a long list of names, and it is easy to make an error. We need this list, because countries are so often spelled wrongly and in different ways, as in "Norway", "Norge", "Norvége", etc. Using search tools like www.google.com, it is usually easy to verify the correct country of residence, by searching using the city name, and/or the school's name.

As ours is a contacts database, relevance cease to exist when the registered person requests the record to be deleted. The reason might be that she has so many friends that there is no time for more. We promptly delete information whenever requested. We do not ask for financial compensation to delete a record.

The following functions/persons are involved in the control and administration of the contact database:

The response team

This is the Kidlink unit in charge of manually checking each individual submitted response before it is approved for inclusion in the database. It is headed by Ms. Epi Sepulveda, a grandmother and educator living in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The team consists of trusted volunteers, mostly women, themselves mothers.

One of their responsibilities is to protect the kids' vital interests. This includes warning a kid's local school or a parent whenever a kid expresses ideas that may be harmful to themselves or others, like suicidal or pyromania ideas. Though not very often, it does happen.

Another responsibility is to protect the kids' dialog by ensuring that our channels for children are only used by kids and youth. Another common challenge is to protect their "space" against unsolicited commercial activities.

The technical development team is the unit developing the software and web pages that receives the kids' responses.

Top management attention

The Response unit organizationally reports to Lára Stefandsdottir, an Icelandic educator who's part of Kidlink's senior management team.

Odd de Presno, Kidlink's Executive Director, receives regular reports about the approval work and related software development.

Kristin (Australia), in June 2001: "I think this site is really good cos it gives kids from every where a changes to talk and find things out about other people from other countries. great job."