Is Your Kid Being Targeted for a Credit Card?

The Spirit of the Law

This is a lot more than I can say for Facebook. Jeff Fox, the technology editor at Consumer Reports, wrote in his blog on the Huffington Post that 7.5 million kids on Facebook are under the age of 13. As long as Facebook asks for an age, they can claim they obeyed the “spirit” of the law. I had to hunt to find the “Safety Center” for tips about how to help your teens stay safe on Facebook. Facebook does mention that you must be 13 in the “Terms” section, but you have to look hard to find it.

With COPPA in place for more than a decade, it’s unbelievable that Facebook has skated by on this issue. This is akin to a 17-year-old boy ordering a beer in a restaurant and when asked for his driver’s license, insisting, “You don’t need to see it. I promise I’m 21.”

On Facebook, he’d get his beer without any hassle. In the real world (okay, let’s just assume he hasn’t obtained a fake ID!), the waiter would check his driver’s license for proof. There has to be an equivalent of “Can I see your driver’s license?” when children and teens are interacting on websites. Accepting lies and then claiming you obeyed the law because you asked simply can’t cut it any longer.

The House author of COPPA, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) are co-sponsoring an amendment to COPPA called the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011. This legislation offers new protection to children and to teens under the age of 18.

If passed, the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011 amendment would require online companies to do the following:

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Explain the types of personal information collected, how that information is used and the policies for collection of personal information.
Require parental consent before they can collect children’s personal information.
Create an “Eraser Button” for parents and children that would permit users to eliminate publicly available personal information.

One of the shortcomings of COPPA is that it only protects children under 13. This new amendment would protect kids up to the age of 18 and would establish a “Digital Marketing Bill of Rights for Teens” to limit the collection of personal information of teens. There’s a lot more and you can read the entire discussion draft for the details.

Privacy and identity theft issues are only going to get more intense. Now’s the time to protect our kids and the Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011 is a step in the right direction.

Image: Wild Zontar, via Flickr