FTC Approves New Imperium Approach for COPPA

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has given its approval to a new method for obtaining parents' verifiable consent for online collection and use of children's personal information, developed by technology firm Imperium.

Imperium's ChildGuardOnline will offer a series of 'challenge' questions asking for information 'not commonly available or typically found in a person's wallet' and 'difficult for someone other than the individual to whom the information pertains to answer correctly', in order to verify that the person giving consent is in fact a parent. This ensures compliance with COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. A month ago the FTC rejected a method put forward by AssertID based on social graph verification.

Imperium founder and CEO Marshall Harrison (pictured) told DRNO: 'We are gratified to be the only new method approved by the FTC for Verified Parental Consent for COPPA. We look forward to working with the industry to protect children from unsafe practices.'

ChildGuardOnline already offers verification via social security number, a method endorsed by COPPA. The approval of the new alternative method assumes that a reasonable number of dynamic multiple-choice questions will be used, of sufficient complexity to avoid guesswork and sufficient difficulty not to be answered by a typical child under 13 - and notes that a similar approach is used successfully by financial institutions and credit bureaus. This last indicates that the FTC is influenced by the existence of a track record for methods under scrutiny.

Imperium is online at www.imperium.com . Thanks to www.lexology.com for some of the above.