The Federal Trade Commission is
updating and strengthening rules that protect children's online privacy. With
more kids having smartphones in addition to home computers, it is more important
than ever to make it harder for data brokers to collect personal information about
a child without parental approval.
The article noted that “Fourteen
years ago, the FTC said in a statement, "the commission did not foresee
how easy and commonplace it would become for child-directed sites and services
to integrate social networking and other personal information collection
features into the content offered to their users, without maintaining
ownership, control or access to the personal data."
Personal information will be include
email addresses and IP addresses, inhibiting a company from following a child’s
page views on the web.
Facebook publicly announced its
support for the policy noting that it prohibits children under the age of 13
from signing up for the service. Currently, sites like Facebook and Twitter, who link their
services to many smartphone games, have been able to track kids. The new rules would
“force third-party partners of websites, including "plug-ins" and ad
networks, to get parental content before gathering data about users under 13
years of age.”
This law will be met with a lot of resistance
from companies that market to children. However, I think it is fair ruling.
Kids have the rest of their lives to be tracked online by marketers… let them be free to be on the web without
this intrusion while they still can!
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