| Comment Number: | 514511-00040 |
| Received: | 2/11/2005 9:38:26 AM |
| Organization: | |
| Commenter: | Roseana Auten |
| State: | TX |
| Agency: | Federal Trade Commission |
| Rule: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| Docket ID: | 3084-AB00 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
Online predators appear in many forms. Just look at the proliferation of bogus banking sites that any adult with an email address is being enticed to visit and give personal financial information. Under no circumstances should a company be allowed to collect personal information from young children — ever! — with or without so-called parental permission. Merely receiving an email from a parent’s email address does not qualify as permission. In fact, such permission would be all but impossible to verify. I ask the FTC to rescind the temporary ruling and ban all companies from collecting information from children under 13. There is very little harm in doing so and the potential for great good exists if there is an across-the-board rule against online interaction between corporations and children. Companies that have food, music, movies, toys and merchandise to market will just have to wait to deliver their messages until their targets are a little older. At the very least, the FTC could enact the ban with the provision that it be reviewed in two years. Data and testimony could be collected and presented to the FTC about the rule's efficacy. Again, there is no harm in piloting this — it isn't as though corporations who sell to children are going to go out of business any time soon.