If your website or app is fully or partially targeted towards children under the age of 13, or your website or app knowingly collects personal information from children under the age of 13, you need to comply with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforced Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). TRUSTe has been an FTC-approved COPPA Safe Harbor certification provider since 2001 and has extensive experience working on children’s privacy programs with clients of all sizes across a variety of industries.
The TRUSTe Children’s Privacy Certification program allows businesses to easily demonstrate the child-friendly nature of their website or app while ensuring compliance with the COPPA Rule and alleviating parental concerns over the safety of their children’s information.
The TRUSTe Children's Privacy Certification program certifies compliance with the COPPA Rule and meets the requirements of TRUSTe's Children's Privacy Program Requirements, which include ongoing site monitoring and privacy dispute resolution.
- Improve Compliance - Reduce the legal risks associated with meeting complex data privacy management requirements
- Protect Brand - Protect your brand from negative media coverage due to privacy issues
- Build Trust - Build trust with users, clients, business partners, and regulators by demonstrating your commitment to protecting customer data
- Maximize Resources - Save time and expense associated with hiring additional legal and operations resources to assess and manage your privacy practices
The Children’s Online Privacy Certifications follow a comprehensive and proven multi-step process to ensure your privacy practices meet applicable regulatory and industry standards.
The Children’s privacy certifications begin with a review of your data privacy management practices for the websites, mobile websites and apps you want to certify. We work with you to identify a range of information including what data you collect, how you use it, who you share it with, third party agreements, use of trackers, privacy disclosures, opt-outs, and much more. We also review your stated privacy practices and policies. The TRUSTe team uses a combination of methodologies including a manual evaluation of your privacy practices by our team of privacy analysts, company interviews and on-site engagements, and digital property scanning tools.
TRUSTe will apply our proprietary scanning technology to the applicable websites and mobile apps, providing comprehensive insight into the variety of data collection activities happening throughout your site and apps. The scan will uncover what could take dozens to hundreds of hours to accomplish manually with internal resources. You’ll find the first and third party trackers with detailed information about them including identity, location, type of tracker and URL. The scan will also shed light into the tracking technologies used, and the entire chain of tracker source (“daisy chain”). You will also get a scoring and evaluation of third party tracker severity, using a proprietary algorithm that calculates its Privacy Sensitivity Index (PSI). It will also provide insights into personally identifiable information (PII) data collection.
We present you with a Privacy Findings Report summarizing a gap analysis between your privacy practices and the TRUSTe Privacy Program Requirements, along with the changes you need to make to your data privacy management practices and privacy policies to achieve certification. The TRUSTe Privacy Program Requirements are built upon the core principles of transparency, choice and accountability and they provide a comprehensive set of requirements based on applicable privacy regulations, industry self-regulatory requirements, and industry best practices.
TRUSTe partners can also help you meet COPPA requirements for Verifiable Parental Consent (VPC) with an FTC approved verification solution.
Once we validate that you've implemented the changes outlined in the Privacy Findings Report, you get access to the TRUSTe Kids Certified Privacy Seal. The seal is recognized globally as a high standard for privacy management and displayed on thousands of websites and apps. You can display the seal both on your privacy statement as well as in other prominent places like your website home page, app download page and site footer to demonstrate your commitment to privacy. The seal is hosted by TRUSTe and linked to a TRUSTe Validation Page to provide real-time verification that your certification is current and valid.
Once certification is complete, you can request a customized letter of attestation that your company is a TRUSTe client that has undergone a review and alignment with TRUSTe's privacy program requirements. This attestation can be shared with clients and business partners as part of RFPs and other processes reviews to complement the TRUSTe Seal, providing a competitive distinction and selling point.
The Data Tracker Scanning technology used in your initial certification is used periodically to help you monitor the ongoing privacy risk for your certified websites and apps. TRUSTed Website Monitoring Service can also include validation checks to alert you when something unexpected appears or if when needed content or functionality are not found.
You also get access to our third-party dispute resolution service, which helps you efficiently manage privacy inquiries from customers. It also addresses the dispute handling requirements for regulatory programs like the US-EU Safe Harbor Framework.
The Children's Privacy Certification also provides you with access to ongoing privacy guidance as it relates to your TRUSTe certification, including new regulations, product plans, geographic expansion, and acquisitions. You’ll get access to TRUSTe Privacy Solutions experts along with Educational Webinars, Seminars, White Papers, and Research Reports.
COPPA / Kid's Privacy Certification is part of our Data Privacy Management (DPM) Service solutions which include assessments and a wide range of certifications. DPM Services are managed by a team of TRUSTe privacy experts who combine 15+ years of expertise, a proven methodology and the power of our industry leading DPM platform to deliver solutions to you.
The DPM Platform is our comprehensive, SaaS-based technology solution which is available stand-alone and also used by TRUSTe to deliver our DPM Services.
For more information, visit TRUSTe Data Privacy Management Platform.