Division of Consumer Affairs Offers Tips to Protect Children's Privacy
Thursday, March 04, 2010 | 08:20am
NASHVILLE - As National Consumer Protection Week gets under way March 7-13, the Consumer Affairs Division would like to highlight the importance of protecting children's privacy.
National Consumer Protection Week reinforces the importance of consumer education on issues such as identity theft, online fraud and other deceptive and fraudulent practices. This is also a time to stress the need in protecting children’s privacy. Whether they are studying, socializing, playing games or learning, kids are spending a lot of time online. Parents must ensure kids make smart and safe choices when they are online. Your child’s personal information and privacy are valuable – to you, to them and to marketers.
- Check out sites that your child visits and read their privacy policies.
- Be selective with your permission. In many cases, websites need your permission before they are allowed to collect personal information from your child.
- Know your rights. As a parent, you have the right to have a site delete any personal information it has about your child.
- Talk to your child. Make sure he or she knows what information should be private.
The U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 requires website operators to:
- Post a privacy policy and link to it on pages where personal information is collected.
- Explain its process and get parents’ permission to collect information from their children.
- Allow parents to choose if their child’s information will be shared with other people.
- Give parents access to their child’s information and the opportunities to delete it and to opt out of future collection.
- Protect the personal data collected from children.
Please feel free to call Consumer Affairs toll-free at 1-800-342-8385 or visit www.tn.gov/consumer. Consumer Affairs is a division of the Department of Commerce and Insurance, which works to protect consumers while ensuring fair competition for industries and professionals who do business in Tennessee.