The Direct Marketing Association, Internet Alliance, and Federal Trade Commission, announced yesterday the availability of a guide designed to help direct marketers comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC rules that govern it.
COPPA, which went into effect April 21, regulates the online collection of personal information from children under the age of 13. The new rules specify what a Web site must include in its privacy policy, when and how a site should seek verifiable consent from a parent, and defines a site operator's responsibility to protect children's privacy and safety online.
The release of the COPPA guide, “How to Comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule,” coincided with the opening of an FTC workshop that was created to help marketers comply with COPPA and understanding the FTC's enforcement authority.
In a further effort to help consumers and to promote and simplify compliance, the DMA also launched an online privacy policy generator for sites that market to children under 13. The generator leads users through the process of creating a COPPA-compliant privacy policy and produces a finished document in either text or HTML format in only a few minutes.
Both the privacy policy generator and the guide can be found online at the DMA's privacy page at www.the-dma.org/library/privacy/index.shtml.
