The Federal Trade Commission has settled with the operators of the Etch-A Sketch Web site over allegations that the firm collected personal information from children.
The Ohio Art Co., the manufacturer of the Etch-A-Sketch drawing toy, will pay $35,000 to settle the charges that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) by collecting children’s personal information without obtaining parental consent at www.etch-a-sketch.com, the FTC said.
The site collected such information as names, mailing address, e-mail address, age and date of birth from children registering for “Etchy’s Birthday Club,” the FTC alleged.
The settlement with Ohio Art Co. is the FTC’s sixth law enforcement case related to COPPA.
As this month marks the second anniversary of COPPA, the FTC has announced a number of new initiatives to aid in compliance with COPPA. They are:
* The release of a FTC COPPA compliance survey, and a business education initiative to help children’s Web site operators draft COPPA-compliant privacy policies.
*The announcement of warning letters to more than 50 children’s sites alerting them to the notice provisions of COPPA and the requirement that they comply with these provisions.
* The Extension of COPPA’s sliding scale mechanism for obtaining verifiable parental consent for a three-year period.
“With the publication of the COPPA privacy policy compliance guide, Web sites that cater to kids have a new plain language guide to how to get it right,” J. Howard Beales, III, the director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, said in a statement.
Network
