The Verge: FTC declines to enforce a kids privacy law for data collected to verify users’ ages

The statement has been cheered by many who favor age verification technologies, but some privacy advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are skeptical the approach will do more to protect kids online. “Age-checking-related data collection poses the very threats that COPPA is designed to address, and we have already seen age estimation systems having issues with data breaches and leaks,” EFF senior counsel David Greene said in a statement. Last year, Discord disclosed that about 70,000 users might have had their government IDs exposed in a breach, after they were collected by a third-party vendor to review appeals related to age. “This is just another sign that the FTC doesn’t truly care about young peoples’ privacy or speech rights,” Greene said.

But the FTC’s policy statement “makes clear that companies choosing to [do] age assurance must do so in a way that is responsible and safeguards against data misuse and inadequate data security,” Suzanne Bernstein, counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), said in a statement.

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