A group of public interest organizations has endorsed the FTC‘s proposal to protect children from unauthorized online tracking. These groups include the Center for Digital Democracy, the World Privacy Forum and the Benton Foundation. They’re supporting updates to COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Ultimate goal? Curb the usage of cookies and tracking mechanisms that solely target those under eighteen.
The Center for Digital Democracy recently released a study showing that a whopping 81 percent of Websites targeted to kids use some form of tracking. It’s often for advertising purposes, and utilized for behavioral tracking. A second analysis showed that these sites are failing to properly explain how and why this information is being collected.
“These findings demonstrate that children’s privacy is not being taken seriously by many of the leading U.S. online content providers targeted at young people”
“Given children’s limited cognitive abilities and the sophisticated nature of contemporary digital marketing and data collection, strong arguments can be made that behavioral targeting is an inappropriate, unfair and deceptive practice when used to influence children under 13”
-Collected comments from groups involved in discussion on Friday
Congress will likely tackle these ideas when consumer privacy legislation is discussed next year. In the meantime, what are your thoughts? I think child safety is of the utmost importance, and it’s important to know what kids are doing online for their safety’s sake, but if Websites aren’t being transparent about their goals, then two thumbs down.
Related articles
- Jeff Jarvis: FTC Fines Santa Claus for Violating Children’s Privacy (huffingtonpost.com)
- Academic Literature Recap, Q4 2011 (ericgoldman.org)
- Webkinz children’s site is subject of complaint to FTC (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
- Top 5 Legal Issues for App Developers (smallbiztechnology.com)
- Online Privacy for Kids: FTC Requests Comments (mediatechparenting.net)
