Advocacy groups urge FTC to protect children online
Posted on | July 1, 2010 | add a comment
A who’s who of advocacy groups today urged the Federal Trade Commission to substantially beef up privacy protection for children who are spending large chunks of their lives online.
Some 17 organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and the World Privacy Forum, submitted this filing calling on the FTC to update and clarify the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.
“The Commission should enact new rules for COPPA that draw upon its current investigations into behavioral marketing and other current digital advertising practices,†said Jeff Chester, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy, another signee. “It’s time for the FTC to do a better job of protecting the privacy of children online.”
Chester says predators are developing new techniques for “tracking and targeting children through mobile phones, video games and virtual worlds.”
COPPA received bi-partisan support when Congress and the President made it law in 1998. The FTC’s rules for implementing COPPA took effect in 2000. The advocacy groups now want the FTC to:
- Extend COPPA’s privacy protections to mobile phones, online gaming consoles, interactive television and other devices used by marketers to track and target children.
- Update its definition of “personal information†to reflect contemporary marketing practices in which persistent cookies, geo-location data and other seemingly random data can be used to target children.
- Close the loopholes that give website publishers wide latitude for contacting children without parental consent.
- Require major websites like Facebook and Google, and other advertising and social networks, to keep regulators updated about their data collection practices.
- Develop a separate set of privacy protections for children 13 and older.
Kathryn C. Montgomery, a professor at American University, led the campaign to enact COPPA in the late 1990s. Says Montgomery:
For the past decade, COPPA has served as an effective safeguard for young consumers in the online marketing environment, establishing a clear set of rules of the road that have helped guide the development of children’s digital culture. With the changes, COPPA will continue to ensure that children reap the benefits of the digital age without compromising their privacy, safety and wellbeing.
By Byron Acohido