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Four Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate urged the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to step up “efforts to implement strong privacy safeguards that effectivity protect children and teens online, including fulfilling your obligation to update regulations under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).”

In the September 29, 2022 letter, Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Reps. Kathy Castor (D-FL) and Lori Trahan (D-MA) urged the FTC to “use its regulatory authority to institute additional protections that address pressing threats online,” such as:

• “expanding the definition of “personal information” covered under COPPA”;
• “implementing rules to effectuate COPPA’s prohibition on conditioning a child’s participation in an online activity on the child sharing more data than is reasonably necessary”;
• “implementing rules to effectuate COPPA’s requirement that platforms protect the confidentiality, security, and integrity of children’s data”;
• “ensuring that COPPA’s requirements protect children on the platforms they actually use by updating COPPA’s regulations defining platforms that are directed to children and updating regulations defining platforms that have actual knowledge they are collecting data from children”;
• “implementing regulatory protections that reflect the increased use of online platforms for educational purposes”; and
• “implementing regulatory protections that reflect changes in online advertising practices.”

The letter also praised the FTC’s proposed broad privacy rulemaking (to which IA and other groups recently asked for more time to respond because of its complexity) and emphasized that none of this obviated the need for Congressional legislation (although they probably mean something more like the minors’ privacy bills passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee than the compromise federal privacy bill passed out of the House Energy & Commerce Committee).