School Library Journal» COPPA

With Tighter COPPA Regulations, Librarians See Hurdles to Kids’ Internet Use

Sarah Bayliss — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 20:01:53 +0000

New rules take effect this month intended to protect kids’ privacy online, and some librarians are worried. Some say that the more stringent regulations may impede mobile app use in elementary schools—and also prevent kids from recreationally sharing favorite hobby sites with each other.

The regulations update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), launched by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 1998. The amendments are meant to limit companies’ abilities to reach children under 13 online and to collect personal information about them without their parents’ permission, as SLJ reported in December.

Businesses will now have to obtain parental consent for kids to use their sites and apps and to gather personal data about their child users, in many cases. Acceptable proof of permission from a parent can include a signed form that is faxed, mailed, or emailed to a company; a credit card, debit card, or government ID; a call to a toll-free number, or a video conference.

The definition of a child’s “personal information” includes data such as “geolocation information, as well as photos, videos, and audio files that contain a child’s image or voice,” along with “persistent identifiers that can be used to recognize a user over time and across different websites or online services,” according to an FTC document.

Library sites are largely not impacted by the new rules, since they apply to commercial enterprises, says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association (ALA). “You’re not selling data—that’s the last thing you’re doing as a library,” she says.

However, librarians should know whether their site uses a commercial widget or another tool that collects information about young patrons, she says. If so, librarians must “be aware of what it is doing with information.” In addition, Caldwell-Stone emphasizes, “you need to be aware of the law because you have parents asking you for information about it.”

Some youth librarians see more roadblocks than benefits in the new rules. “It’s hard to determine how this will play out until we see how sites respond to the COPPA revisions, but it’s likely that the updated regulations will impact mobile app use in K–12 learning,” says Michelle Luhtala, department chair at the New Canaan (CT) High School Library.

“Many apps don’t function properly without permission to access geolocation information, photographs, audio files, and videos,” adds Luhtala. “Schools that integrate mobile app use in the classroom often require students to download apps during the school day when parents are not available to grant permission. It’s possible that the new rules will create an age divide within schools—scaling back flexibility among the under-thirteens.”

In Caldwell-Stone’s view, the regulations may “become so onerous that it becomes a burden to young people who want to use the tools.” She adds, “parents will have to be there facilitating this, or else the kids will be shut out” of many online resources. Or children will “lie about their age.”

Luhtala says that when schools hire services to deploy mobile applications, “2013 COPPA will add an extra layer of permissions with which to wrestle.”

Gretchen Caserotti, library director of the Meridian (ID) Library District, notes that the amendments may hinder kids’ exploration and sharing of hobby apps.

“I do appreciate the effort to protect kids, but it seriously limits the possibilities that are so exciting in so many new tools,” says Caserotti, also chair of the ALSC (Association for Library Services to Children) Children and Technology Committee. “Imagine if your older child is really engaged in diy.org for kids, and could discover other maker kids in his or her city through the app. Just like libraries connect kids from different schools, neighborhoods, and life worlds, these tools can provide new ways for kids to connect with each other.”

Caserotti adds, “I’m personally incensed that it permits direct advertising.” Under the new rules, businesses will still be able to collect data without parental consent for some purposes—including limited advertising. “COPPA’s parental notice and consent requirements don’t kick in if the identifier is used solely to support the internal operations of the site or service,” according to COPPA documents. Such “internal operations” include “contextual advertising, frequency capping, legal compliance, site analysis, and network communications.”

Some data companies lobbied against the COPPA revisions, saying that the cost of enforcing them would be prohibitive and stifle innovation, as reported in The Hill and other outlets. Under the new rules, platforms like Google Play and the Apple App store will not be held liable if items sold on their sites are not COPPA-compliant.

How will COPPA play out? Caldwell-Stone notes that currently, “Parents are the greatest enablers of under-13 going on Facebook.” With the tighter rules, “We might see enforced verification of age in ways we don’t want to see.” She points to a scenario in which kids are “borrowing mom and dad’s wallet for a few minutes” to get the credit card verification they need to gain access to a site.

But overall, “the philosophy behind COPPA is not something we object to,” says Caldwell-Stone. “The controversy over the new regulations is that they’re much more stringent. I’ll be interested to see how these regulations actually shake out.”

The FTC issued two supporting documents to help consumers and companies understand them: a guide for parents, “Protecting your Child’s Privacy Online,” and a “Six-step Compliance Plan for your Business,” advising organizations how to abide by the rules. An FTC video, “Protecting Children’s Privacy under COPPA,” also outlines the amendments.

“Kids Online” Report: Young Children’s Social Networking Habits Harder to Track than Teens’

The Digital Shift — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:14:31 +0000

Lack of good data on how children under 13 use social networking sites (SNS) is an enormous problem, according to “Kids Online,” a report issued by The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Before experts can effectively design, assess and manage SNSs for kids, the report says, they need to examine kids’ habits more closely. Citing the National School Boards Association study (2007), the report points out that although about half of school districts forbid SNS use during the school day, there is still a great deal of “officially sanctioned, educationally packaged social networking occurring in schools.” Furthermore, “since children are generally excluded from participating directly in public life, it is worth highlighting the significant opportunities that kids are given by social networking and other online forums to collaborate in the creation of shared cultural texts,” the report says. In other words, SNSs are of great interest to educators, both formally and informally. One stumbling block, according to “Kids Online,” is that tracking of youth SNS use focuses heavily on teens, and applying teen data to SNS habits of younger children is ineffective. Children under 13 use SNS less and also differently than teens. While older kids tend to engage with mainstream, adult social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc.), younger ones are more likely to network while playing games, exploring virtual worlds, or creating and sharing projects. Because of this, the report advocates mindfulness of “the paradoxical fact that although younger children are often excluded from actual research studies, they are nevertheless evoked in news coverage of ‘kids and social networking’ trends.” This type of coverage, in turn, influences policy decisions. “Panic reporting” (e.g. on bullying) further obscures more nuanced conversations about child SNS-use, according to the report. Many typical SNS (such as Facebook) now turn away younger users rather than face the challenges of complying with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which requires “verifiable parental consent” for websites that collect data from children under 13. As the report notes, these restrictions may be “just as much about policy compliance as age appropriateness.” The result is that younger children create fraudulent accounts by lying about their age, or are simply excluded: “Some scholars argue that although COPPA was originally introduced to protect and foster children’s participation in online culture, it has also had the unintended consequence of officially closing off vast swaths of the Internet from younger children,” the report says. Kids who lie about their age remain invisible to tracking. Sites aimed at the under-13 set are often neglected in research studies and vary widely in quality, the report concludes, with the pessimistic note that “evidence is growing that many of the virtual worlds for children that are currently available are impoverished compared to those for teens and adults… the comparable worlds designed for children often provide much more limited, homogenous texts, contain fewer affordances and action opportunities, and even promote bad grammar because of word filters.”

New COPPA Proposals Raise Privacy Concerns

Lauren Barack — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 16:17:33 +0000

New rules proposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) designed to protect minors in the digital age are leaving some concerned that its intentions could do more harm than good.

The government agency hopes to strengthen the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by including social networking sites, apps, and other platforms that weren’t around when the act originally passed in 1998. That law requires parental approval for kids under the age of 13 if they want to use sites aimed at children. Facebook and other sites can avoid complying with the law by opting to ban minors altogether.

But new rules, first proposed in August, seek to require that sites with “a disproportionately large percentage of children” —whether they’re aimed at children or not—also be required to follow COPPA. It also proposes that app developers, whose codes are used on sites aimed at children, also comply with COPPA’s rules. This could include sites like YouTube and Wikipedia, which, while not expressly aimed at children, often are used by them. Collecting information from those who use such high-trafficked sites could create privacy concerns that deter users from these sites rather than protect young users.

“We commend the FTC for trying to keep up with web technology, smartphones and apps,” says Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director for the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. “But what we’re concerned about is the First Amendment, and verifying age and identification might mount barriers to freely access information on the Internet.”

Since COPPA is aimed at commercial sites, it doesn’t impact public or school libraries. (Although, the ALA does suggest librarians understand the law so they can explain it to parents and children). However, the ALA is monitoring developments of the proposed rules and did sign on with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and added comments to the proposed rules last month.

“Both of these proposals are too vague to give operators and developers a clear understanding of their obligation under the law and would create significant burdens on free expression and innovation,” write the two groups.

To Anne Collier, the problem also involves privacy and data control. With parents having to submit information in order to open additional sites, more data is collected on minors, thus creating more opportunities for the data to be used or potentially taken.

“You have that data spread in more places,” says the co-director of ConnectSafely.org. “If you require parents’ permission at every layer in the food chain, you have more data and more storage—and that makes people’s information more vulnerable.”

The FTC closed the public comment period on September 10, with the commission aiming for a final vote by the end of this fall.