As of April 21, 2000, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act has been in effect, in the effort to protect the private information of children under the age of 13. This act dictates what the operator of a website must include within the site’s privacy policy, as well as how and when verifiable content may be sought out from a parent, and in what ways the webmaster is responsible for the protection of the privacy and safety of children online.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act applies to online services and commercial websites directed to children under the age of 13 and which collect the child’s personal information, or which targets a general audience which may include children in its information collection.
In order to discover whether a given website is targets children as its primary audience, or the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) includes certain elements in their decision: subject matter, the age of the site’s models, language used, audio and visual content on the site, child-targeted advertising on the site, direct information disclosing the intended age for the website, as well as whether the website uses animated characters and other child-geared features.
The operator of the website – that is, the website, or person ultimately responsible for its content and running – is determined by the FTC to be the person or group who owns and controls the information on the website. The operator is also the one paying for the collection and maintenance of the personal information of the site’s users.
The rules of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act apply to any identifiable information collected by the website about a child. This can include the child’s full name, email address, mailing address, telephone number, or anything else that is unique to the child visiting the website and would allow someone else to somehow contact that individual.
A privacy notice is therefore required on all sites that collect this information. The privacy notice must comply with strict content and placement regulations by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which are available at the FCC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act website