Senators Introduce Bill Prohibiting Sales of Children’s Lists
Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Ted Stevens (R-AK) have introduced a bill that would ban the sale or rental of personal information for consumers under age 16. The legislation, which was introduced Thursday, had not been assigned a bill number at deadline, but is commonly known as the “Children’s Listbroker Privacy Act.”
As introduced, the bill would permit the Federal Trade Commission to take action against any entity vending the name, home or other physical address, e-mail address or online username, telephone number, Social Security number or any other personally identifiable information of a child.
According to the bill’s “findings” section, “Commercial list brokers routinely advertise and sell detailed information on children, including names, addresses, ages, and other data, for use in marketing. This data is commonly available on children as young as two years old, enabling marketers to target specific demographics such as junior high school, elementary school, or even preschool.”
The newly introduced bill acknowledges provisions within the No Child Left Behind Act that address child data protection, as well as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Family and Educational Rights and Privacy Act. But it states that, “When data on children is collected in a manner that is outside the scope of those statutes, however, Federal law does not significantly restrict the commercial sale or resale of such data.”
But the new legislation also notes that list marketers have “an economic incentive to find new and creative ways to collect and compile such information, and possibly to circumvent or subvert the intent of those federal statues that do govern the collection of information about children or students.”
The bill does allow exemptions for sales made with parental consent, or use of data that does not involve the child being solicited for a sale, or the data being provided to others for offers.
Representatives from list companies that specialize in student files were not available at deadline.
If the bill passes into law, its provisions would take effect six months after its passage.
