India, Jan. 12 -- An online safety advocate has accused Google of undermining parental authority after the company emailed her youngest child, saying he was "almost 13" and eligible to remove parental controls from his account. The allegation was made in a LinkedIn post by Melissa McKay, president of the Digital Childhood Institute.

In her post, McKay shared screenshots of the email and Google help pages, which state that children over 13 can choose to stop account supervision and take "full responsibility" for their Google account. "Read that again. Slowly," McKay wrote, calling it one of the most "predatory corporate practices" she has seen.

"A trillion dollar corporation is directly contacting every child to tell them they are old en...