The Future of the COPPA Rule: An FTC Workshop

Workshop topics will include:

• How the development of new technologies or business models, the evolving nature of privacy harms, and changes in the way parents and children use websites and online services, affect children’s privacy today;
• How the Rule should address parental consent for education technology vendors that collect personal information consented to by schools, following on discussions that occurred during the FTC’s Student Privacy and Ed Tech workshop in December 2017;
• Whether the Rule should include a specific exception to parental consent for audio files containing a child's voice that website operators collect and then promptly delete;
• Whether the Rule should permit general audience platforms to rebut the presumption that all users of child-directed content are children, and if so, under what circumstances;
• Whether the revisions to the Rule made in 2013 have worked as intended or require modification; and
• Whether the Rule should be amended to better address websites and online services that do not include traditionally child-oriented activities, but that have large numbers of child users.