Home / Kids' Safety / Safety Guide / Get Privacy-Wise / Find, Read, Understand, and Act

Find, Read, Understand, and Act

Privacy Notices and Privacy Policies are the Key!

Parents can use the Internet to learn how to keep their children's personal information safe.

Kids Web sites will tell you how they treat your children's personal information in the form of a posted notice on their Web site. These notices, often called privacy policies, should provide you with the much of the information you need to protect your kids' privacy.

• Find: These privacy policies should be easy to find--posted where the site would collect information from your child. Web sites often place links to these privacy policies on their Web site front page. If the Web site has a kids section, you may want to look for the privacy policy there. You should not have to look too hard. Here are some keywords to look for: Privacy Policy, Privacy Notice, Privacy Vow, Notices, Privacy Disclosure.
• Read/Understand: The Web site's privacy policy will provide valuable information to you about what personal information the site collects and what it does with that information. The privacy policy will provide:
  • People to Contact: Who can you ask questions about privacy, provide permission or deliver feedback.
  • Information Collected: What information the site collects from children and what they do with it. Also, these kids' Web sites must tell you if they share your child's personal information with other companies, organizations or individuals. For a guide to understanding privacy policies, click here.
• Act: Parents need to use the information provided in privacy policies to make decisions about where their children play on the Internet. Parents have many resources to help control the collection and use of their child's personal information. Parents can now:
  • Obtain from Web sites the personal information they have collected. The Web site must provide you with a reasonable way to find out about or access that information. More on how some Web sites provide parents with access,
  • Stop the Web site from using already collected information,
  • Prevent Web sites that have collected information in the past from collecting it again in the future.

What if a Web site fails to abide by their privacy notice? What if the Web site is not meetings obligations under this new law?

If you have a complaint about how a Web site is handling your child's information, first try addressing it with the Web site (Note: If you feel that your child is in danger visit our "Reporting Trouble" section). If the problem is not addressed in a reasonable amount of time, you can contact your State Attorney General's Office or contact the Federal Trade Commission:

Federal Trade Commission Consumer Response Center
Room 130
600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20580

Call toll-free 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).