July 5, 2008

PROTECT KIDS' PRIVACY ONLINE

Attorney Catherine J. Furay
Telephone (608) 257-7181

Today's kids are taking advantage of all the web has to offer - playing, shopping, studying, chatting and just surfing. In an effort to protect children's online privacy, Congress passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The primary goal of COPPA is to place parents in control over the information that is collected from their children online. COPPA is an effort to protect children on the Internet, but parents still need to be vigilant in teaching their children what to do and what not to do on the Internet.

Under COPPA, websites that are directed at children or who knowingly collect information from children under 13 must post a notice of their information collection practices. This includes:

types of information they collect - for example, name, home address, email address, hobbies
how the information will be used - for example, to market to the child, to notify contest winners, or to make the information available through a chat room
whether the information is forwarded to advertisers or other third parties
a contact at the site

Parental Consent

In many cases the site must obtain parental consent before collecting, using or disclosing the information. In some cases, however, you should be aware that consent is not required. Consent is not required if:

the site is collecting an email address to respond to a one-time request from the child,
to provide notice to the parent,
to ensure the safety of the child or the site, or
to send a newsletter as long as the site notifies the parent and provides an opportunity for the parent to say no to the arrangement.

One of the challenges in enforcing COPPA is that children may lie about their age to avoid the parental consent requirement. This is often the case because children may not understand the safety and privacy issued created by collection of their personal information. It is therefore important to explain the privacy and safety concerns to children.

Limiting Access

The COPPA Rules are meant to give parents control over the collection of personal information about their children. It does not limit a child's access to information that is publicly available on the internet. Thus, while COPPA may keep your children off email lists that attempt to contact your children, it does not directly keep your child from accessing pornography or other information you think is inappropriate. If you are concerned about your children accessing inappropriate materials on the Internet, you may want to look for a filtering program or an Internet Service Provider that offers such tools.

Safety Tips

Standing alone, COPPA will not safeguard children from cyber perils. It is a tool, but not a complete shield. The danger of absolute strangers contacting your children for improper purposes still exists. Due to "anonymity" on the Internet, children may assume the exchange of email is not "talking to strangers." Safety tips to discuss with your children include:

instructing your children never to reveal personally identifiable information without talking to you first
be clear about the online activities that are acceptable to you and those that are not
make sure your child's screen name, email address and instant message name do not reveal information about age, gender, hobbies or location
use technology protection.

COPPA provides parents the opportunity to better protect their children from predatory practices on the internet. But, COPPA is not, nor was it intended to be, the kind of shield that will allow parents to ignore or be less vigilant about their children's activities on the internet. The best protection from illicit internet practices aimed at children remains parental involvement. For more information on COPPA visit www.ftc.gov or call toll-free 1-877-FTC-HELP.

Catherine Furay is a shareholder in Murphy Desmond S.C., Madison, Wisconsin practicing in all aspects of marital property law, general commercial law and civil litigation.