The Special Case of Children's Privacy

If you direct your online activities to children under the age of 13, or have knowledge that you are collecting data from kids in that age range, under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) you must obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting and sharing the information, consent that must be revocable by parents at any time. What is verifiable? What constitutes collection? How do you obtain parental consent? How do you manage the permission process? All good questions with few easy answers.

But what if you're not a kid-oriented site? Do you collect any age information about your visitors? Then you may be subject to COPPA. In fact, frequent studies of general audience websites have indicated that while huge numbers of sites were potentially covered by COPPA, few if any had the kinds of privacy measures required by the law.

PrivacyClue consultants have extensive experience in designing and implementing parental consent processes for e-commerce ventures of all sizes. Let us help you assess your exposure under COPPA and help you design solutions that fit your needs in cost-effective ways.