COPPA

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Last week, the Federal Trade Commission made clear that child-directed parts of an otherwise general audience service will subject the operator of the service to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Just six months after the FTC’s record-setting settlement against TikTok, the FTC announced a $170 million fine against Google and its subsidiary YouTube to settle allegations that YouTube had collected personal information from children without first obtaining parental consent, in violation of the FTC’s rule implementing COPPA. This $170 million fine—$136 million to the FTC and $34 million to the New York Attorney General, with whom the FTC brought the enforcement action—dwarfs the $5.7 million levied against TikTok earlier this year. It is by far the largest amount that the FTC has obtained in a COPPA case since Congress enacted the law in 1998. The settlement puts operators of general-audience websites on notice that they are not automatically excluded from COPPA’s coverage: they are required to comply with COPPA if particular parts of their websites or content (including content uploaded by others) are directed to children under age 13.

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Advancements in technology appear to have spurred the Federal Trade Commission to initiate a review of its rule promulgated pursuant to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (the “COPPA Rule” or “Rule”) four years ahead of schedule. Last week, the FTC published a Federal Register notice seeking comments on the Rule. Although the FTC typically reviews a rule only once every 10 years and the last COPPA Rule review ended in 2013, the Commission unanimously voted 5-0 to seek comments ahead of its next scheduled review. The Commission cited the education technology sector, voice-enabled connected devices, and general audience platforms hosting third-party, child-directed content as developments warranting reexamination of the Rule at this time.

Background

The COPPA Rule, which first went into effect in 2000, generally requires operators of online services to obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children under the age of 13.  In 2013, the FTC amended the COPPA Rule to address changes in the way children use and access the internet, including through the increased use of mobile devices and social networking.  Its amendments included the expansion of the definition of “personal information” to include persistent identifiers that track online activity, geolocation information, photos, videos, and audio recordings. The new review could result in similarly significant amendments.

Questions for Public Comment

In addition to standard questions about the effectiveness of the COPPA Rule and whether it should be retained, eliminated, or modified, the FTC is seeking comment on all major provisions of the Rule, including its definitions, notice and parental consent requirements, exceptions, and security requirements.…
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New York is now one of the 43 states where “revenge porn,” the posting of explicit photographs or videos to the Internet without the subject’s consent, is punishable by law. See how far the states have come – find out how many had criminalized revenge porn as of 2014, when Socially Aware first covered the…

The cost for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) has been steadily rising, and companies subject to the law should take heed. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a record-setting $5.7 million settlement with the mobile app company Musical.ly for a myriad of COPPA violations, exceeding even the December 2018 $4.95 million COPPA settlement by the New York Attorney General. Notably, two Commissioners issued a statement accompanying the settlement, arguing that the FTC should prioritize holding executives personally responsible for their roles in deliberate violations of the law in the future.

COPPA is intended to ensure parents are informed about, and can control, the online collection of personal information (PI) from their children under age thirteen. Musical.ly (now operating as “TikTok”) is a popular social media application that allows users to create and share lip-sync videos to popular songs. The FTC cited the Shanghai-based company for numerous violations of COPPA, including failure to obtain parental consent and failure to properly delete children’s PI upon a parent’s request.

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Most companies are familiar with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and its requirement to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information online from children under 13.  Yet COPPA also includes an information deletion requirement of which companies may be unaware.  On May 31, 2018, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a blog post…