Please note: The reports in this section are not product reviews or tests; they're meant to spotlight options for you to consider, as well as milestones in children's online-safety technology development. Comments from readers on their own experiences with these products and services are most welcome - and, with your permission, we publish them. Do email us your own product reviews anytime!
Children's privacy players (Sept. 24, '99)
At the Interactive Kids conference in San Francisco last week, we got a thorough briefing on the state of children's online privacy. For starters, it might be useful to you just to know who sat on the panel. They're the US's leading authorities on the subject, and kids' Web site publishers were listening to them carefully. They are:
- Toby Levin of the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC site keeps everyone up to date on the FTC's efforts toward better consumer privacy protection on the Internet (see its "About Privacy" section).
- Dave Steer of TRUSTe, an independent, non-profit organization that has third-party privacy seal programs (for both children's and general Web sites) that identify sites in compliance with current, FTC-approved privacy standards. The TRUSTe site has a section that teaches Web users how to protect themselves and how to tell which sites have bad privacy practices.
- Elizabeth Lascoutx of the Children's Advertising Review Unit, Better Business Bureau - CARU helps businesses, including Web sites, keep their material and practices child-appropriate by providing guidelines, serving as a watchdog, and highlighting bad practices. CARU publishes its guidelines for appropriate children's advertising and content right in its site.
- Parry Aftab of Aftab & Savitt, P.C. law firm and ,a href="http://www.cyberangels.org">CyberAngels - Aftab & Savitt specializes in the intersection of business and cyberspace, and CyberAngels educates the public in all aspects of online safety; monitors safety and privacy in chat rooms, Web sites, and other online places children visit; and works with local and national law enforcement agencies to track, expose, and arrest online violators of children's rights.
- Katharina Kopp of the Center for Media Education - CME is a Washington, D.C.-based children's advocacy, public policy, and watchdog organization. It both tracks and develops research on the impact of digital media on children. CME held a milestone conference on the subject almost a year ago (see our report) which gathered together people from academia, advocacy, and the Internet industry to think together about what quality digital media for children looks like and about developing an agenda for publicly available research on the subject.
What all these people were discussing at the conference was the law called COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. An FTC recommendation led to its passage last fall, and the FTC has since been working out the actual rules that will allow children's Web sites to comply with the law. Here are types of children's "personal information" that the law says Web sites may not gather from kids under 13 without their parents' permission: first and last name, physical address, email addresss, phone number, and social security number. The final word on COPPA - what it requires of Web publishers - will be issued by Oct. 21, then the FTC will develop business and consumer education materials. On April 21, 2000, the FTC begins monitoring Web sites for compliance with the law.
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