COPPA Compliance

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) is a federal law in the United States that applies to the online collection of personal information from children under the age of 13.

The law is intended to protect the privacy of children and to give parents control over the types of information that are collected from their children online. Under COPPA, websites and online services that collect personal information from children must provide notice to parents, obtain their consent before collecting personal information, and take reasonable steps to protect the privacy of children. COPPA applies to a wide range of online activities, including the collection of personal information through websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms.

There have been numerous reported cases of COPPA violations, including by well-known companies. In 2019, for example, Google and YouTube were fined a total of $170 million for violating COPPA by collecting personal information from children without parental consent. Other companies that have been penalised for COPPA violations include TikTok, Facebook, Musical.ly and Snap. It is important for companies to ensure that they are in compliance with COPPA and other relevant laws and regulations when collecting and using personal information from children.

Complying with COPPA

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) applies to websites that collect personal information from children under 13 years of age. If you operate a website that meets any of the following criteria, you are required to comply with COPPA:

• Your website is specifically designed for children under 13 and you collect personal information from them
• Your website is aimed at children under 13 and you allow others to collect personal information from them
• Your website is intended for a general audience, but you are aware that you collect personal information from children under 13
• You operate an advertising network or plug-in and have knowledge that you are collecting personal information from website visitors under 13 years old.

Does Proxima Comply with COPPA?

If your website falls under COPPA's jurisdiction, it is important to ensure that your analytics software is compliant with the regulations.

Under COPPA, the processing of personal information, including persistent identifiers such as IP addresses, is allowed for the purpose of maintaining and analysing the functioning of a website. However, this exception does not allow the use of personal information to contact a specific individual or to create profiles on them. It also does not apply if the website collects any personal information other than a persistent identifier.

At Proxima Analytics, we take privacy seriously and follow COPPA regulations. We do not store the IP address alongside any other personal information. Additionally, we do not keep IP addresses or user agents for our stats collection, instead using a privacy-first hashing method. You can read more about our data journey and how we ensure compliance with COPPA on our website.

The Road Ahead

At Proxima Analytics, we fully support child protection laws and believe in the importance of ethical analytics. We understand that children's personal data is particularly sensitive and must be protected, which is why we do not sell the data of anyone, including children. Selling personal data can lead to serious privacy breaches and harm individuals, particularly vulnerable populations such as children. That is why it is important to stop selling personal data and instead prioritise privacy and security. At Proxima Analytics, we take the protection of personal data very seriously and have implemented robust measures to ensure compliance with all relevant privacy laws and regulations, including those related to children's data.