UK Privacy Regulator Issues Code For Online Services Likely To Be Used By Children

The UK Information Commissioner's Office ("ICO") formally issued its code for online services whose user audience is likely to be children under 18.

The code, which received parliamentary approval, sets out 15 standards of age-appropriate design. It reflects a risk-based approach intended to provide default settings that ensure that children have access to online services whilst also minimizing data collection and use, by default. These principles include, for example:

• A duty to conduct a data protection impact assessment;
• Designing the service with 'high privacy' settings by default, unless a compelling reason for different default settings can be demonstrated. This also applies to data processing for profiling purposes; and