Dave and Bill  

by: david c ballard

Denise is the co-founder of Privacy Vaults Online with her brother, which was founded in 2001 in response to some Federal legislation that was passed, called the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

It all began with a dream to start a family business, and along came this new thing called the Internet. Denise's brother had the idea of creating a virtual world for kids to share their entrepreneurial spirit by sharing product ideas, marketing ideas, marketing research, and collaborations with the idea of their nutty inventions rewarded with some virtual currency and eventually to take their ideas and see if they could bring them to market.

It was during this time while Denise and her brother were putting these ideas together that they tripped over the Childrens Online Protection Privacy Act (COPPA), because they would have to comply with COPPA regulations to continue with their virtual kids’ business idea. However, during this time when the Internet bubble burst in 2000, Denise, also recognized with COPPA regulations, there would be a need for a business to emerge. It would be like a PayPal for kid’s identity, a way for children to present or identify themselves to companies when they are using the web. Unfortunately, you cannot see who is on the other side, and the need for those companies to know if they are dealing with children, and how to interact responsibly by processing the parental consent, which the law requires, had to be addressed.

COPPA says that if you are, a sight directed at children under the age of 13, or if you are a general audience site, which gains actual knowledge, you need to be compliant. For example, a kid fills out the registration form and tells you they are 12 or under, or they are enter something into a blog that is monitored, and tell you they are in a grade, which would be 12 or under. If a company learns of that knowledge or they are directed at children, then they have to “process parent’s verifiable parental consent” in advance of collecting any personal information from the child. Alternatively, before they allow the child to have a tool whereby they would be able to deliver their own data to the public, such as MySpace, Facebook, Utube, Instant Messenger, etc. certain compliancy needs to be followed.

In any case, the Terms of Service would ask for an age identity and if you were under the age of 13, you would be denied access to the site, which seems to be the remedy instead of allowing access with certain stipulations as to what personal information that could be collected.

Now, think of Protect My Child Registry (PMCR), which will be free to parents, as a "Do Not Call Registry". The PMCR is a place where parents can come, and create a parent account for themselves. The parent will insert their child relationship and say, "Johnny at AOL, this phone number, this email address, belongs to this eleven year old. If he/she shows up checking the box for being 21 and over, at "whatever site", or if he/she shows up giving a date of birth, which is an adult date of birth (where he would not be treated with the security in mind for a youth), then companies can ping this registry in real time. Moreover, if this particular phone number is entered into our system as an adult, can we market, can we interact, and can we allow this user to register? Does the registry know anything about this information? If we respond in a secure manner that this information has been registered with a child then that content provider can provide terms of use and regulatory requirements, and block access or scrub from their marketing list by taking Johnny out of their information.

Anonymity makes it difficult for companies to block age-restricted children from their sites. Social networking sites are having a difficult time knowing who the minors are. Therefore, how do you protect children, do you require verification of everyone and eliminate anonymity?

Denise recognized a need for parents to register their child and to recognize at a minimum the need for ISP, social networking sites who want to protect children 13 and under the ability to ping the PMCR in real time to verify minors who are registered.

If you are a parent who cares…listen to Denise, and learn what PMCR is all about.

Denise‘s company is the only technology company approved by the FTC as a “Safe Harbor” company.