The public comment portion of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) review of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) closed on July 12, showing that many of the commentators were focused on a need for the FTC to provide more options for parental consent.

The comments came after the FTC's March 24th announcement that it would seek comment on the COPPA Rule. The Rule, which requires that web site operators notify parents and obtain their consent before collecting personal information from children under 13, became effective on April 13, 2000. COPPA imposes a number of obligations on web site operators who gear their sites towards children or who know that children use their sites.

In the comments, the technology companies pressed the FTC to improve its recommendations for acquiring age verification and parental consent. Specifically, representatives from both Microsoft and ESA pushed for the FTC to encourage more parental involvement. The companies explained that some online services simply blocked visitors under the age of 13 in order to comply with COPPA but that this did little to protect children's privacy and instead only encouraged a child to lie about his or her age in order to visit a blocked site. These companies asked the FTC to identify new parental consent mechanisms that would comply with the spirit of COPPA.

Some suggestions for parental consent involved the use of text messages, digital identity cards or the development of a web-based parental consent process. The web-based parental consent process essentially offered as a solution a system that would allow parents to self-verify via a third party trusted web site. Through that site, the parents could obtain a password that would allow them to provide consent to the applicable web sites.

Other commentators asked the FTC to reconsider the "actual knowledge" standard that has been imposed by the Commission. Essentially, COPPA requires a web site to comply with its regulations when a web site operator has "actual knowledge" that children visit the site. Several advocacy organizations said that this standard allows web site operators to avoid the requirements of COPPA, simply because they only have a general idea that children may be visiting their web site.

Arent Fox is monitoring this situation. For more information, please visit our recent coverage here, or contact Anthony Lupo or Sarah Bruno.

Anthony V. Lupo
lupo.anthony@arentfox.com
202.857.6353

Sarah L. Bruno
bruno.sarah@arentfox.com
202.775.5760