A company that asked the FTC to find...
A company that asked the FTC to find its parental verification technology falls under the agency’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule rebutted two privacy groups’ criticism. The reasons the Center for Digital Democracy and Electronic Privacy Information Center give…
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for wanting the commission to reject the COPPA request “are based on invalid assumptions and faulty analysis,” wrote AssertID President Keith Dennis in a blog post on the company’s website Friday (http://bit.ly/14PEbq9). Using Facebook to verify that someone’s a parent, and therefore can give a kid under 13 permission to register with a website or mobile app, is based on “extensive academic research,” he wrote. “Our method also requires a parent to divulge less information than other approved” parental verification methods, Dennis wrote. CDD and EPIC make “some valid points,” and it’s correct that the company only lets parents verify their identity using a credit card for “premium” services, he said. The website or mobile app operator should be able to choose to bypass credit-card verification, which costs more than other sorts of identification checks, Dennis said. “The alternative is for AssertID to raise the pricing of our basic service offering thereby forcing all Operators to incur the costs of the alternate verification methods.” Dennis had no comment about criticism of AssertID’s plan by other COPPA participants (CD Sept 26 p20). CDD and EPIC will meet with FTC officials about the groups’ concerns, CDD Executive Director Jeff Chester told us. “We look forward to the FTC’s investigation, and addressing the objections” from the two groups, he said. “Companies can’t expect that they'll get a free pass to help children be targeted online.”