COPPA - Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Module ?

The checkbox alone can be enough for many sites assuming that they don't want any children under 13 using the personalization features of the site. Now if you wish to allow children under 13 to use these features, you either need to limit which ones(maybe control with a role) or get parental authorization. I started thinking about this when a friend of mine decided that she wanted to make a website as a companion to a book she has written.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information from children under 13. The new rules spell out what a Web site operator must include in a privacy policy, when and how to seek verifiable consent from a parent and what responsibilities an operator has to protect children's privacy and safety online.

Verifiable Parental Consent

Before collecting, using or disclosing personal information from a child, an operator must obtain verifiable parental consent from the child's parent. This means an operator must make reasonable efforts (taking into consideration available technology) to ensure that before personal information is collected from a child, a parent of the child receives notice of the operator's information practices and consents to those practices.

Exceptions

The regulations include several exceptions that allow operators to collect a child's email address without getting the parent's consent in advance. These exceptions cover many popular online activities for kids, including contests, online newsletters, homework help and electronic postcards.

Prior parental consent is not required when:

*an operator collects a child's or parent's email address to provide notice and seek consent;
*an operator collects an email address to respond to a one-time request from a child and then deletes it;
*an operator collects an email address to respond more than once to a specific request -- say, for a subscription to a newsletter. In this case, the operator must notify the parent that it is communicating regularly with the child and give the parent the opportunity to stop the communication before sending or delivering a second communication to a child;
*an operator collects a child's name or online contact information to protect the safety of a child who is participating on the site. In this case, the operator must notify the parent and give him or her the opportunity to prevent further use of the information;
*an operator collects a child's name or online contact information to protect the security or liability of the site or to respond to law enforcement, if necessary, and does not use it for any other purpose.

More detail can be found at these links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.shtm

-------------------
http://www.PrivacyDigest.com/ News from the Privacy Front (Drupal)
http://www.SunflowerChildren.org/ Helping children around the world ( Drupal)

I'd like to but first I'll need a bit of that mysterious thing I've heard of called "free time", and a bit more ;-) knowledge on drupal module building. It does seem to be a niche that could use filling though. Now if only my friend was a best selling author instead of of a struggling artist, so she could sponsor this :-)

The asking for an actual birth date reducing false sign ups does sound logical though. A 8 year old who can't be bothered to figure out when they would have to be born to pass the test, would have no problem just clicking on a check box.

-------------------
http://www.PrivacyDigest.com/ News from the Privacy Front (Drupal)
http://www.SunflowerChildren.org/ Helping children around the world ( Drupal)