The Federal Trade Commission last week settled separate charges against Hershey Foods Corp. and Mrs. Fields Cookies for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting data from kids under 13 without parental consent. Hershey pays civil penalties of $85,000; Mrs. Fields pays $100,000. The fines mark the FTC’s largest COPPA penalties to date. The FTC says several of Hershey, PA-based Hershey’s 30-plus Web sites (mostly brand-specific sites) asked kids to have parents complete an online form but didn’t follow up to be sure parents did.
“This method of obtaining parental consent was not reasonably calculated to ensure that the person providing consent was the child’s parent,” the FTC said in its complaint. It’s the commission’s first COPPA case to challenge a marketers’ method of getting consent.
Three Mrs. Fields sites (www.mrsfields.com (http://www.mrsfields.com ), www.pretzeltime.com (http://www.pretzeltime.com ), and wwwpretzelmaker.com (http://wwwpretzelmaker.com )) had sections targeting kids with birthday clubs that included birthday greetings and coupons for free cookies or pretzels. The FTC said Mrs. Fields, Salt Lake City, collected data (full name, home address, e-mail address and birthdate) from more than 84,000 children without getting parental consent.
The FTC complaints said both companies failed to get verifiable parental consent before collecting kids’ data; didn’t post adequate privacy policies; didn’t notify parents directly about data being collected; and didn’t give parents “reasonable means” to see data collected and prohibit further use.
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