Rising Regulation of Kids Privacy Demands Compliance: SuperAwesome Official
CHICAGO – With regulators increasingly focused on child privacy, compliance is critical, said privacy experts at the Association of National Advertisers conference on Monday.
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Even though a new kids’ privacy law hasn’t passed at the federal level, many states have age-appropriate design code laws, and “now is really the time for companies to start ensuring that they're following these principles,” Katie Goldstein, global head of policy at youth-focused tech company SuperAwesome, said during a panel. “We expect more of these to be proposed and passed in the U.S.” She added that “the FTC has really demonstrated that it's prepared to use [its] Section 5 authority to protect kids and teens from harmful mechanics and manipulative design.”
Under new leadership this year, the FTC’s privacy enforcement activities have “focused almost exclusively on protecting kids and teens,” said Wilson Sonsini privacy attorney Maneesha Mithal on a separate panel. The federal enforcer is looking at kids’ content on a “video-by-video” basis, she added.
Kids privacy laws vary among states on factors like how old someone must be to be considered a child. “The best and most practical way forward is to not collect any personal information … from anyone under 18 when you're trying to serve ads to them,” said Goldstein. “That means using contextual advertising.”
Contextual ads, which are based on things like a webpage’s content rather than the viewer’s personal data, work “across all ages,” said Goldstein. Also, most laws on the books “have some kind of exemption for contextual ads,” she said. “This is really the way that we see [not only the] regulation going, but also public sentiment.”