COPPA

Deanna Mulay

COPPA Article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/cybertruth/2013/07/01/new-coppa-rules-better-protecting-children-online-take-effect-today/2479327/

One question that I always had was: How was the Internet protected? Now that I am studying to become a teacher, I worry about protecting my students from cyberbullies, their private information being released, etc. I want to make sure that they are safe online and their information will be secure. 1) I also had another question that came up when I was reading the article was: What made the new Rule come into play if the Internet already had some protection (How unsafe was the Internet before this new rule)? Though this article is a few years old, since it was written in 2013, I still think that it is good to read up on some of the details that this law covers. One of the rules that this law has is that a parent must give consent for a child who is under the age of 13 to go on an operator of a website and give personal information. When a child is putting their information into a computer, the new rule states that the child’s information must be stored securely. 2) In my opinion, I think that having these new rules are a great thing to have. Having a child’s information taken is the worst thing that could happen. The Internet is a scary place to store information, but if the new rules of COPPA protect the students then I feel some sense of security for their private records.

3) A connection that I thought of with this article was when I was online playing video games. I never put in my real name, I always did a username. My mom always told me to never put in information that was private in a computer because it could be hacked. I am very grateful that I listened to her because the new rule came into effect in 2013, but I was on the computer way before that year. 4) The article says, “The new Rule also makes clear that third parties, such as advertising networks, who receive personal information from sites they know are child directed must comply with COPPA, even if they have no direct user relationship with the child. Although these third parties will not have to investigate their partners' sites, the Federal Trade Commission has suggested that they will be deemed to have knowledge if one of their employees recognizes that they are receiving personal information from a child-directed site.” I think that this statement is really important because children need to be protected when they are using the Internet. Whether a child uses the computer for storing their personal information on sites like Facebook, or just playing games, they need to be protected. One way to protect the children is to have them create usernames. It is important to have laws like COPPA in the world because children need to be protected on the Internet. Hopefully one day all of the children who use the Internet can be 100% protected. 5) The importance of having COPPA in place is to insure that children are protected on the Internet and their private information is stored properly.