COPPA, Age Verification, and the FTC’s Enforcement End Run
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a new plan to “protect children online.” It starts by relaxing enforcement of the very privacy law designed to protect them.
In a new enforcement policy statement on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the FTC signals that it will decline to pursue enforcement actions against companies that collect personal information for age-verification purposes before obtaining verifiable parental consent (VPC). In effect, the agency is inviting companies to gather additional data—including from children—in order to determine users’ ages.
That move sits uneasily with COPPA’s statutory design. It also reflects a broader policy shift: rather than mandating age verification directly, the FTC appears to be encouraging it indirectly through selective non-enforcement.