Do you have a child that uses the Internet or plays with an app on your phone or tablet? Unless you live in Mad Men times, you've probably answered "yes" to these questions. Then, you should have heard about COPPA, right?
I didn't until recently. I assumed it was the Barry Manilow song.
However, COPPA is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, a U.S. federal
law enforced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to protect the privacy of
children when they go online.
It requires parental consent
from websites and apps looking to collect personal information from users under
13-years-old. It's the most significant overhaul of the nation's laws to
protect children's online privacy. In short, COPPA is good news.
The updated federal children's online privacy rules go into effect in
July. Developers of games and other mobile software are still figuring out how
to comply: They must balance their desire to tap the lucrative kids' market and
the increased regulatory headache of targeting children.
The biggest problem: data-collection practices that have become routine
in the app industry could run afoul of the new rules when used in kids' apps.
Regulators spent much of the last two years soliciting comments from
entertainment companies, app developers, consumer groups and others about how
to best update the way the government enforces COPPA.
The FTC can seek civil penalties against Coppa violators, and in the
past has won settlement payments as high as $3 million.
In the law's early years, COPPA was relatively simple to enforce:
Regulators cracked down on websites that asked kids for emails, home addresses
and phone numbers without first checking with their parents.
But the explosion of smartphone and tablet games complicated the
picture. Children are big users of those devices and are picking them up at
very young ages. The devices have expanded the range of information that can be
harvested, from device usage patterns to location data to photos and videos.
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