CIPA, COPPA, and Age Verification
This week I've been reading about federal regulations on protecting children's safety and privacy online. I'm certainly not an expert in this topic, and I know there are a lot of aspects that could be discussed, so this post is just my two cents. As readers may remember, I was on the internet in the early days of Web 2.0. I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations has passed, so I'm comfortable saying that I definitely didn't always use my true age when signing up for an account. It was so easy to just choose a different year, and all my friends were already on these sites, so why not? The website certainly didn't try to deter me. I realized even then that the requirement to enter my birthday to make an account was to protect the company I'm making the account with, not me. If the requirement for account holders to be over 13 is so easy to get around, then the age of their users is obviously not what they're worried about. So what are they worried ab...