Is our concern about kids' safety hurting the future of online marketing? Or are marketers just crying wolf?
Millions of kidsââ,¬"and lots of grown-ups, tooââ,¬"lost their e-mail accounts earlier this year as the US Federal Trade Commission's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act legislation took effect. As early as February, companies began ousting their preteen consumers in preparation for the law's April 21 debut, in many cases canceling accounts for anyone under 13. But was the panic necessary?
"Businesses are attempting to make a huge deal out of what they're claiming [COPPA] is doing to them," says Malcolm Maclachlan, an IDC analyst. But he points out that COPPA is a nonissue for most companiesââ,¬"those that don't resell children's information. "A lot of the sites that claim they're being harmed are the ones that want to reserve the right to resell [personal information]. There's a certain amount of hypocrisy right there."
Some sites, like NBCi and the Web site for the popular TV show Thomas the Tank Engine, cite excessive compliance costs as the reason for closing kids' accounts. But Mozelle W. Thompson, FTC commissioner, says, "Most sites that are providing real value to kids find the rule pretty workable." What's the rule? The legislation largely involves getting parental consent, and compliance can be as easy as providing a fax number for parents to send in permission slips or requesting a parent's e-mail address during registration. General audience sites that don't collect age information are exempt from this requirement altogether.
The act has two goals: to protect kids' privacy by preventing them from innocently selling themselves out, and to block sexual predators from accessing children's online communities. One of the first children's Web sites to comply with COPPA, SurfMonkey.com, provides games, shopping, bulletin boards, moderated chat, and e-mail services to kids under 13. In addition to its portal, SurfMonkey.com offers its own browser and an Internet Explorer plug-in packed with parental control features that prevent kids from getting too friendly with strangers. "If a stranger does send e-mail to a child, it arrives in the in-box as a locked e-mail that the parent must unlock for the children to read it," says John William son, chief operating officer and cofounder of SurfMonkey.com. "COPPA has really increased our credibility among parents."
"The most [COPPA] will do is encourage innovation," says Parry Aftab, an attorney specialising in COPPA and founder of WiredKids, a central registration Web site for parental consent. "If it's doing good business, the site's not really hurt as long as there's an inexpensive way for small sites to comply, which is what we're doing with WiredKids." WiredKids aims to simplify the consent process for parents by keeping parental consent forms on a single server, which can be made available to approved sites on a sliding cost scale.
To those who scoff at the idea of online predators, Aftab says, "When NBCi terminated the accounts of kids under 13, they got a lot of complaints from adults who had identified themselves as under 13. If you ever wanted a sign that pedophiles are online, that's it."
