Everything was so easy that it couldn't be true and no, it wasn't. He wanted to become Youtuber and earn money like his idols, but he has managed to get his parents a debt with Google of 100 thousand euros, a debt that fortunately, as explained by the company, ended up canceling.
Google had charged 100 thousand euros in the savings card of a 12-year-old boy from Torrevieja, Alicante, in advertising. The child's family put the matter in the hands of a lawyer because they believe that everything has been too easy for a minor who, according to them, has not even been asked for the ID to hire these advertising services.
The 12-year-old boy and his 15-year-old friend wanted to charge for the content that they were going to upload to their music channel, but what they had hired was just the opposite, to advertise them through AdWords, Google’s service to position and promote content on the network.
In fact, SMS was sent to his mobile phone that he and his friend interpreted as income and not as expenses, what they really were.
And a 12 year old boy can get into this mess?
At the beginning of August, it was directly the bank that called the mother of this potential youtuber to alert her of some anomalous charges that were arriving from Google's headquarters for Europe, in Ireland.
In less than a month, the family owed the giant Google, practically 100 thousand euros in advertising requests created by your child and his friend.
Is that to hire this form of advertising, you just have to provide an email account, a checking account and the website that is intended to be advertised in the case of individuals, as was the case.
The boy and his friend opened the account providing these data, without ID and without verifying anything else, according to the family. The passage of the bank account was as simple as it was the child's own savings card that they indicated. According to them both and according to the child's family, there was no need to put more data or verify more information.
The mother thought that it was still something normal, considering that most of the children who are in 1st ESO also want to be youtubers, so this intention did not seem dangerous or strange, until she met the first Bank notification
The family has also contacted a computer scientist from Torrevieja who explained that the matter is not a little girl and that they face one of the most powerful companies in the world.
They have been fortunate to have the selfless collaboration of both this computer expert and a lawyer since the family has limited resources, something that encouraged his son even more to tell them the story of the milkmaid in youtuber version.
Debt canceled
Luckily for the family, the story ended well. This afternoon, from Google announced that "We have analyzed this case and we have not received money from this user" so they decided to cancel the debt. "They thought they were charging, but they were orders to insert advertising in these videos that was costing them money since they did it through AdWords," the service offered by the search engine to promote and position web content.
Finally, they did not miss the opportunity to remind unsuspecting parents that "many online services, including Google AdWords, have restrictions on use by age."
