Five Reasons Why the Time is Now for PRIVO
And Why Doing Right by Kids is Always Great for Business
By: Denise G. Tayloe, Co-Founder & CEO, PRIVO
Looking back, I humbly acknowledge that PRIVO, the company I started 20 years ago, was too early for the marketplace. But those days are behind us now, and Russell Anmuth, on my advisory team, encouraged me to write a piece on why “The Time is Now” for PRIVO.
In the year 2000, my brother and I created a website directed to children and tripped over a new US privacy law. That ruling, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), gave parents of children under 13 the final word regarding collection, use, and disclosure of their children’s personal information online. The new law also required companies to handle children with special protections. When we started, there were no roadmaps on how to ensure children’s privacy online. To establish that our website was compliant, I had to become a subject matter expert in children’s’ online privacy and soon realized others would need access to that expertise and specialized tools to comply. I could not have imagined that consequential regulatory enforcement and genuine corporate action on behalf of children would languish for the equivalent of an entire generation’s childhood. And so, the 20-year journey began.
One market fundamental that has not changed over the past two decades is an essential backdrop for this story: Kids lie. This timeless, universal truth sets the stage for why NOW is the time for PRIVO because it is ground zero for nearly every pain point we solve. Let me briefly explain the connection. Kids will always be kids. But when kids lie to join their friends in popular, age-restricted digital activities, they pass through a loophole that seriously endangers their privacy and safety and creates enormous brand risks along the way.
Current digital access standards often rely simply on the honor system, leaving the gates wide open for bad things to happen when children are present in digital environments not designed to protect their privacy or safety. Some of the most frightening risks are present in popular, big tech offerings where kids lie and companies turn a blind eye. Many of those operators have avoided doing the right thing by promoting the idea that it is unreasonably difficult to verify a child’s age or secure parental consent when kids knock on the door to join an age-restricted service. Fortunately, PRIVO has invested twenty years (and successful pursuit of three patents) to become the premier operating system for parental consent, making it easy and practical for companies to protect children. We fully expect that over the next five years all digital content attracting children will require reliable age gates and jurisdictionally defined parental notice and consent. Finally, now is the time for PRIVO 2.0 to disrupt the global digital ecosystem by providing the internet’s ubiquitous child and parent consent layer.
FIVE REASONS THE TIME IS NOW FOR PRIVO
1. The planet’s 2.2 billion children urgently need protection.
Children are the fastest-growing digital population on earth, with over 25% under age 14. They are using their own devices at an all-time high, playing games, making and streaming videos, texting with friends, logging into their classes, and more. Nearly half of US tweens (ages 8–12) have a smartphone. Over 80% of the world’s children and 92% of US children have an online presence before turning two years old.
With this surge comes increasingly onerous risks to children’s personal safety and the use of their data by businesses and organizations. It also means that children are fibbing to companies to gain inappropriate access in virtually every language, from all internet access points across the world. Companies face intense attention from regulators, who are finally signaling greater scrutiny and more vigorous enforcement. And there are new generations of tech-savvy parents, digital privacy advocates, and industry insiders who are both parents and technology managers, engineers, product developers, and executives, acknowledging the hypocrisy and driving demand for authentic and practical solutions.
The time is now for PRIVO solutions to protect this vulnerable population while minimizing risk and opening doors for brands and operators across the globe. PRIVO’s newest suite of software and services bring exactly what is needed; interoperable, scalable, jurisdictionally aligned, compliant, friction-minimizing processes to help brands legally and effectively interact with the next generation of global influencers while supporting families to keep kids safe.
2. The new PRIVO Protect service is a game-changer for children’s digital privacy and safety.
Launching in summer 2021, the patented PRIVO Protect service will safeguard digital identities and foster responsible online engagement for minors and their families. In less than five minutes, any parent across the globe will be able to enroll their children and authorize PRIVO as their agent to ensure they are not granted access to age-restricted products and services for which the child is below the minimum age. Parents may add their children and minors-associated devices through PRIVO directly and via employers and partners who support sharing the message to accelerate adoption. Serving as the family’s Privacy Concierge, PRIVO will ensure that no publisher, platform, or digital service can allow future access to children simply by proclaiming that it is too hard to verify their ages. PRIVO will provide assurances to parents while working to help children claim their rights and increase digital privacy and safety literacy. Learn more here.
3. The PRIVO iD (PiD), an age-verified single sign-on credential (vSSO), simultaneously protects kids, empowers teens, reassures parents, and reduces brand risk across the digital landscape.
The time is now for kids to finally have their own interoperable, privacy-preserving, age-verified login credentials. To grow into privacy-savvy adults, children need opportunities to practice online identity protection. The PiD is one of the best available methods for teaching and protecting kids, with minimal information collected, proper age verification, and friction-free child and parent consent. Kids, along with their parents, have legal rights for specific control over their personal data and should be afforded safety measures and protection from harm just as they are in the offline world while enabling them to build a trusting relationship with their most loved brands.
4. PRIVO painlessly solves increasingly complex minors-associated data compliance issues while enabling companies to address consumers of all ages.
PRIVO’s unique roster of regulator-authorized certification and assurance programs and configurable, compliant software services provide companies with real protections and concierge-level guidance to “get minors’ privacy and safety right.” The stakes have never been higher. There is no longer any leeway for companies to avoid privacy laws and regulations. In the past three years, the regulatory landscape has changed significantly. COPPA was considered the gold standard in child privacy protection until 2018, when the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force with the goal of putting EU citizens in control of their personal data.
From California’s new law (CCPA) to Brazil’s LGPD, Europe’s GDPR created a recipe for the world. The GDPR covers all data subjects from cradle to grave and includes special protection for children and minors. The UK Information Commissioner’s Children’s Code is due to come into force in less than six months, and the Irish Data Protection Commissions consultation puts children at the heart and center of approaches to data processing. COPPA is also under review with updates coming out this year.
After twenty years of evolution, a new era of privacy-preserving legislation is exploding and strengthening across the globe. The time is now for companies to understand and address their obligations, responsibilities, and risks concerning minors’ identity protection. Given the global complexity, that is a tall order requiring substantial, specialized intellectual capital and experience not resident in most companies. PRIVO’s parental consent operating system addresses the entire spectrum of minors identity via age gates, consent services and device blocking.
5. PRIVO solutions promote new revenue streams for companies, whether their success requires responsibly engaging with children — or reliably blocking minors.
The opportunities for commercial innovation around privacy-preserving touchpoints with families are substantial and ready to be leveraged by forward-thinking brands and services. PRIVO compliance-assured software and deep professional services cover every minors-associated identity and privacy use case to address engaging children or restricting minors’ access for jurisdictions across the globe.
Today’s consumers, including children and adults alike, expect more from the brands they choose to allow into their lives. Parents want one-stop, easy-to-implement solutions to allow their children access to rich education and entertainment opportunities. They seek trustworthy reassurance that their children are safe. Likewise, children want to engage with content and experiences that are popular with friends, address their interests and passions, and enable new and dynamic features and services that grow along with their developmental ages and stages.
Brands and products that are legally or ethically age-restricted will benefit from assurances that children are not present in restricted populations. Knowing that a minor is attempting access (with fraudulent ages, emails, and other data) will help companies mitigate serious risks, while protecting their desired adult consumers from unintended interactions with children. When privacy protection is done right, everybody wins.
Perhaps the most appropriate response to the theme of “why the time is now for PRIVO” is that finally, the time is now for kids.
Children are curious by nature and will test boundaries and try the forbidden as an evergreen rite of passage. But allowing self-asserted ages to serve as the only barrier for age-restricted digital environments results in serious risk to children’s privacy and safety. Children should not have to choose between their personal safety and modern play and learning.
After twenty years, the time is now for kids. PRIVO stands ready.
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