The FTC staff published today a “Six-Step Compliance Plan” for businesses to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

The guidance, which provides a useful framework for businesses, states explicitly that COPPA applies to connected toys and other devices that collect personal information from children over the Internet.  The FTC’s 2013 revisions to the COPPA Rule greatly expanded the scope of the COPPA Rule by broadening the definition of “personal information” in two ways.  First, the definition now includes persistent identifiers, such as device IDs and IP addresses.  Second, the definition now covers audio, video, and image files of children.  Internet-connected toys and devices often collect persistent identifiers and voice or video information in order to function.  (Importantly, there are a number of other elements that must be met for COPPA to apply, and various exceptions that permit the collection of some types of information.)

The guidance does not, however, break new ground on COPPA’s substantive requirements.  For example, the two new parental consent methods that the guidance references — requiring a parent to answer a series of knowledge-based” challenge questions and using facial recognition technology to compare the parent’s selfie and driver’s license — were approved by the FTC in 2013 and 2015, respectively.

As a result, the guidance misses an opportunity to address, for example, best practices to de-identify voice data or to confirm that other verifiable parental consent methods (such as a parent’s informed purchase of a connected toy) should be sufficient under COPPA.

 

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Photo of Lindsey Tonsager Lindsey Tonsager

Lindsey Tonsager co-chairs the firm’s global Data Privacy and Cybersecurity practice. She advises clients in their strategic and proactive engagement with the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Congress, the California Privacy Protection Agency, and state attorneys general on proposed changes to data protection…

Lindsey Tonsager co-chairs the firm’s global Data Privacy and Cybersecurity practice. She advises clients in their strategic and proactive engagement with the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Congress, the California Privacy Protection Agency, and state attorneys general on proposed changes to data protection laws, and regularly represents clients in responding to investigations and enforcement actions involving their privacy and information security practices.

Lindsey’s practice focuses on helping clients launch new products and services that implicate the laws governing the use of artificial intelligence, data processing for connected devices, biometrics, online advertising, endorsements and testimonials in advertising and social media, the collection of personal information from children and students online, e-mail marketing, disclosures of video viewing information, and new technologies.

Lindsey also assesses privacy and data security risks in complex corporate transactions where personal data is a critical asset or data processing risks are otherwise material. In light of a dynamic regulatory environment where new state, federal, and international data protection laws are always on the horizon and enforcement priorities are shifting, she focuses on designing risk-based, global privacy programs for clients that can keep pace with evolving legal requirements and efficiently leverage the clients’ existing privacy policies and practices. She conducts data protection assessments to benchmark against legal requirements and industry trends and proposes practical risk mitigation measures.