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By PEDER MAGEE and JAMES TRILLING
Senior Attorneys, FTC
Whether or not in school or at dwelling, youngsters are in all probability utilizing expertise to do their schoolwork. However have you ever ever questioned what data that expertise is gathering out of your child?
The FTC has, and right this moment issued a coverage assertion that put ed tech on discover: Children shouldn’t have to surrender their privateness rights to do their schoolwork or go to class remotely. In different phrases, ed tech firms: You’ll be able to’t require mother and father and colleges to comply with the excellent surveillance of youngsters for youths to make use of these studying instruments.
You may need heard of the Youngsters’s On-line Privateness Safety Act – additionally known as COPPA. It’s on the middle of the FTC’s efforts to guard youngsters’ privateness within the digital world. This regulation, enforced by the FTC, says that any web site or service (assume apps) that COPPA covers has to get a mother or father’s (or in some circumstances, a faculty’s) OK earlier than it collects private data out of your baby below 13. COPPA additionally protects youngsters’ privateness in different methods, like limiting how lengthy firms can hold your baby’s private data and requiring that they correctly safeguard the data. When an organization breaks the principles, the FTC can sue.
With the pandemic-inspired explosion of ed tech, the FTC desires to clarify that ed tech firms providing on-line providers directed to youngsters below 13 should observe the regulation, together with by correctly safeguarding your baby’s private data and, the place an organization depends on the varsity to offer consent, utilizing youngsters’ data just for school-related functions, not for issues like advertising.
So, try the coverage assertion itself for the small print. However mother and father, right here’s the message that trade is getting: The FTC is watching, ever extra intently, what child information you acquire, how you employ it, for a way lengthy you retain it, and the way you defend it.
To maintain up with the newest FTC actions, in addition to the highest frauds and scams, join FTC Client Alerts: ftc.gov/consumeralerts.
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