Protecting Children’s Privacy Under COPPA

Since the passage of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), websites that collect personal information from children under 13 have made significant progress in protecting children’s safety and privacy on the Internet. However, a survey of children’s websites conducted by the Federal Trade Commission (Commission) in April 2001 shows that the rest of the story on children’s privacy protection remains to be written: While a majority of the sites provided some key privacy protections for children’s personal information, they did not comply with all the requirements of the Rule.

Congress enacted COPPA in 1998 to limit the collection of personally identifiable information from youngsters without their parents’ consent. The Commission’s Rule implementing COPPA, effective since April 2000, requires websites to post a complete privacy policy, notify parents directly about their information collection practices, and get verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from their children – or sharing it with others.