Privacy Protections for Children Online May Hamper App Developers

The following is an excerpt from an article in:


The New York Times
Monday, December 24, 2012

Privacy Protections for Children Online May Hamper App Developers

By NATASHA SINGER

Now that the Federal Trade Commission has published its updated privacy protections for children online, Facebook may finally open its site to children under 13, industry analysts say.

But those very same new rules, they say, may prompt some small app developers to pull out of the children's market altogether.

The original rules, based on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or Coppa, required operators of Web sites directed at children under 13 to notify parents and obtain their consent before collecting personal information from children, like their names, addresses and phone numbers.

The revised rules, made public at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday, widen the list of children's personal information that will require parental permission to collect. It will now include children's photos, videos or voice recordings, the IP addresses of their computers and the locations of their mobile phones. The updated rule also requires social networks, advertising networks and other third parties to get parents' permission before knowingly collecting data from children's sites and apps.

But the rules have radically different implications for big Web sites and small app developers.

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