The new playground: why we need to re-architect the internet to prioritize child privacy

Even as data privacy becomes an increasingly salient regulatory priority in the US, legislation remains fragmented, making it difficult for companies to stay in compliance with sensitive rules such as those concerning children’s privacy. Instead, argues Sourcepoint chief privacy counsel Julie Rubash, organizations would do well to bake children’s privacy into their strategies and operations from the get-go.

As digital privacy becomes a more pressing priority across the political landscape, legislators are shifting their attention to some of the most vulnerable internet users: children.

The federal government is imploring big tech to be more accountable for child privacy. President Biden made this priority clear in March during his State of the Union address, when he told Congress that it’s “time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children [and] demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.”

Part of this effort could include updating existing privacy laws, such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), legislation passed in 1998 that outlines the personal information that websites can collect on kids under the age of 13. While COPPA was transformative when it was passed, a lot has changed in digital advertising, data ethics and data storage since then. There are also efforts under way to expand the scope of COPPA to protect the data privacy of youths over the age of 13.

Read the full article in The Drum