Compliancy Requirements and Protected Information for Coppa and Cipa

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COPPA AND CIPA

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Compliancy Requirements and Protected Information for COPPA and CIPA

        In order to gain compliance for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, one must be operating an online service or a commercial website which is directed to children under 13 and should be collecting all the types of personal information from children. An individual who is operating a general website for the audience can also compliance for the Act if he has actual knowledge of the fact that he is collecting some sort of private information from children.

        This Act applies to the information that identifies the individuality of a child and this information should be collected by online means. The information might include name, home address, email, contact number, etc which could allow any person to contact a child. This Act also covers information related to the interest, hobbies and also all the information that is collected through other forms of tracking mechanisms.

        In order to obtain compliance for the Children’s Internet Protection Act, the schools should prove that they are using technology protection measures such as an internet safety policy which is being implemented successfully at the time of service (Chrislip, 2005). It must filter or block access to data that might include child pornography, obscene or any other information harmful to minors. They should also be able to monitor the online activities that children perform on the internet.

Similarities and Differences between COPPA and CIPA

        COPPA and CIPA are both similar in the way that they both work for children in order to protect them from threats that might affect them mentally (Hostetler & Okada, 2013). The younger age is the age when an individual develops his ideas and beliefs about life and exposure to threats arising from leak of personal information or from obscene things on internet can cause great harm and negativity in development. Hence, both these Acts work for the protection of Children.

        They are different in the respect that one works for protecting the personal information of children on the general sites on the internet in order to ensure that no one misuses this information for causing any harm to children (Chrislip, 2005). The other operates in schools in order to ensure that the content to which the children have access is filtered and does not contains any information which is not meant for them. Both have different implementations and different compliancy requirements.

        There is a need for two different Acts in order to ensure the proper working of the laws and to separate the sections in which these laws will operate. This increases the efficiency of implementation of the laws. If there will be one Act only then it will become difficult to monitor each and everything under it. Therefore, there is a need for two different Acts in order to implement them successfully.

The Most Challenging Elements of both COPPA and CIPA

        The most challenging element for COPPA is that the younger children these days are migrating towards more public and general audience websites. These websites mostly include the social networking websites and other such websites which are meant for adults and are not intended for the use of small children (Hostetler & Okada, 2013). These websites attract their presence and it is becoming difficult to monitor it.

        There is great potential for age falsification to happen on these websites which are made for the general audience. There is an another major challenge which is that do these sites even know that the information that they are using, collecting and sharing belong to children and can even contain the correct personal information about them.

        The challenges to CIPA implementation is that the schools are not putting in their complete efforts towards the compliance of it. They are simply applying filters in order to gain revenues which the government is providing for fulfilling compliance of CIPA. This amount is provided for installation of more computers and services in schools and hence at most places filters are just implemented in order to gain this revenue.