Security News > 2020 > January > Lawmakers look to spread COPPA out to cover kids up to 16
COPPA - the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which is the toughest federal protection for children's online data in the land - isn't tough enough, according to two US House Representatives who've introduced a bill that would update the law and beef it up.
It's basically COPPA - which protects the data of kids 13 and younger - extended to the age of 16, and given a dose of the right to be forgotten.
The PROTECT Kids Act would also add two new categories of data to what COPPA now protects: precise geolocation information and biometric information.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission warned that the toys are a security risk, due to cameras, microphones, connections to email or social media, vendors' lousy track records when it comes to patching known security problems and/or their data storage, retention and sharing policies and practices - among other things.
Following its $170 million fine for flagrantly, illegally sucking up kids' data so it could target them with ads, YouTube essentially decided to sit out the thorny task of verifying age, instead passing the burden on to creators.