NetFamilyNews.orgThe US Federal Trade Commission’s revisions to the COPPA Rule announced today (12/19/12), are aimed at syncing up a rule mandated by a 1998 law with today’s technology and with “the way children use the Internet, mobile devices and social networking,” the FTC says in its press release. For example, the personal information that services [...]
Only 20% of the 400 children’s apps the FTC analyzed “provided disclosures about their data collection practices,” the New York Times reported today – and the apps that did linked to long, dense privacy policies that few users could comprehend. The Federal Trade Commission’s announcement does not surprise; it’s an update of the Commission’s report [...]
If there were no Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, teens would be safer in social media, a new study from researchers at New York University indicates (pdf). Without COPPA, children under 13 would have little to no reason to lie about their age to set up a Facebook account, for example (this would be true [...]
A US law about children’s online services can really only regulate US-based children’s online services. It might influence foreign regulators but it has no jurisdiction over sites and services based outside the US and can’t stop US users from leaving compliant services and going to noncompliant ones outside the US (or in it, for that [...]
It’s tough to be the FTC – or anyone else trying to make rules for user-driven (social) media. It’s hard enough to make static rules address fast-changing technology. Then there’s the problem of changing understanding of consumers – the intended beneficiaries of the rules and the users of user-driven media – as we all adjust [...]
While the Federal Trade Commission is taking a fresh look at the Children’s Privacy Protection Act of 1998, the Senate Commerce Committee is taking a look of its own – in the form of a hearing today on children’s privacy and new technologies called by the Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance Subcommittee. Two witnesses [...]
Thirteen is the minimum age of the world’s most popular social network sites, including in the UK, and a quarter of British 8-to-12-year-olds who use the Net at home have profiles on social-network sites, according to study by UK regulator Ofcom. Given similarly high levels of Internet use on both sides of the Pond, I [...]
Because Buzz is brand-new and a hybrid of Gmail, micro-blogging, cellphone social mapping, and social networking, we’re all at the early stages of figuring out its implications for kids – a lot of whom use Gmail. Yesterday Charlene Li, a mom and well-known social-media-industry analyst, blogged that she had discovered her 9-year-old daughter was using [...]
There seems to be this firewall between kids’ products that kids like and kids’ products that parents like. It’s rare and amazing when that wall collapses, but I think what helps is when the product, while passing parental muster, is just plain useful to kids. Kid-friendly online utilitiesChildren’s Web browser Kidzui meets those criteria – [...]
Remember COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998? It was designed to protect the privacy of children under 13. According to Berin Szoka and Adam Thierer, who just completed a paper for policymakers on current efforts to change COPPA, “the law was intended primarily to ‘enhance parental involvement in a child’s online activities’ [...]
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