Jaxel
Well-known member
So I've been running forums for a LONG time. Back in 1998/9, my then website (upnetwork.com) was at its peak and hitting #6 on the Alexa Web Rankings (yes, I know Alexa only ranks IE users, but back then, IE had a 95% market base). That also happened to be when the COPPA act came out. My website at the time happened to be about Pokemon, so you can imagine how this affected me. Actually, not at all, as the COPPA didn't become a requirement till 2000.
The COPPA act pretty much required website owners to verify the act of any user who attempts to create an account. If they are under the age of 13, if they wanted to create an account, it would be the WEBSITE OWNER's responsibility to get parental permission to create the account, or simply reject the account all together. Most websites simply do the latter because it's easier, and kids tend to just say they are older than they really are.
The internet bubble popped and my website went down before COPPA became an issue. Now its 11 years later and I just heard about Disney getting fined $3m for failing to keep to the COPPA requirements in their privacy policy. Looking at history, it appears that the FTC has been going out of their way to fine websites which fail to meet COPPA regulations. And not even just big websites, sometimes small websites too.
Should I be worried about this? I have COPPA disabled on my forums, should I enable it? Does XenForo even have COPPA support? Or does COPPA only apply to websites which fall under FTC jurisdiction? Since I don't sell any "product" on my website, do I have safe harbor provisions? Back when I ran upnetwork.com, I pretty much had all 100+ pages of the DMCA memorized... but that was a long time ago.
The COPPA act pretty much required website owners to verify the act of any user who attempts to create an account. If they are under the age of 13, if they wanted to create an account, it would be the WEBSITE OWNER's responsibility to get parental permission to create the account, or simply reject the account all together. Most websites simply do the latter because it's easier, and kids tend to just say they are older than they really are.
The internet bubble popped and my website went down before COPPA became an issue. Now its 11 years later and I just heard about Disney getting fined $3m for failing to keep to the COPPA requirements in their privacy policy. Looking at history, it appears that the FTC has been going out of their way to fine websites which fail to meet COPPA regulations. And not even just big websites, sometimes small websites too.
Should I be worried about this? I have COPPA disabled on my forums, should I enable it? Does XenForo even have COPPA support? Or does COPPA only apply to websites which fall under FTC jurisdiction? Since I don't sell any "product" on my website, do I have safe harbor provisions? Back when I ran upnetwork.com, I pretty much had all 100+ pages of the DMCA memorized... but that was a long time ago.