A bill proposed in the US House of Representatives on Jan. 9
aims to give parents greater control over the data collected about their
children by amending the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), which
imposes requirements on websites and online services that collect, use, or
disclose personal information on children.
The bipartisan proposal
would raise the age of parental consent protection from 13 to 16 years and give
parents or legal guardians the authority to force companies to purge any
private information they may have collected about their children.
“Children today are
more connected online and face dangers that we could not have imagined years
ago,” said
Rep. Tim Walberg, the Democrat who proposed the amendment, along with his
Republican colleague Bobby Rush. “While advancements in technology allow for
many benefits, it also poses a risk for our kids. I am proud to work with Rep.
Rush to update our digital privacy laws to safeguard our children and their
personal data online.”
Rush said the proposal, called the PROTECT Kids Act, “will
not only do as its name suggests and protect children across the country from
online threats, but it will also provide parents with the peace of mind that
their sons and daughters are safer when accessing websites and mobile
applications.”
The most recent amendments to the COPPA Rule came in 2013, before
many technological changes that can pose a risk for our children. The
enforcement of the COPPA Rule puts parents in control regarding what
information websites can collect from their kids, with two new categories added
to the legislation, precise geolocation and biometric information.
Before the proposal, mobile applications were not affected
by the legislation, and parents weren’t given the power to delete any personal
information of their children.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) penalized several
prominent companies in the past year for non-compliance with COPPA. Most
notably, Google and its subsidiary YouTube were fined 170 million in September
2019 for illegally gathering children’s data and targeting ads without their
parents’ consent. In the settlement, YouTube is required to develop and
maintain a system that permits channel owners to identify any child-directed
content posted on the platform.
The penalty might not put this big fish under the table,
however, small organizations and services providers can be severely crippled if
they do not comply.