FTC Proposes Changes To Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule

On September 15, 2011, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") released the changes it is proposing to make to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (required by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or "COPPA"), which has been in effect since 2000. To address technological developments in the past decade, the FTC is recommending a number of changes.

Major Changes

Two changes are likely to be of most concern to businesses that may have children on their websites.

"Personal information" now includes "persistent identifiers." The FTC proposes to expand the definition of "personal information" to include "persistent identifiers"—cookies, IP address, and other tracking mechanisms used for some purpose other than the "support for the internal operations of the Web site." The FTC's proposed language would permit operators, without parental consent, to use persistent identifiers for purposes like "user authentication, improving site