Most Americans have long ago given up fighting the notion that their behavior is tracked by advertisers as they move around the web. The subject of our children’s privacy, on the other hand, remains a political and cultural firestorm. Now the New York State Attorney General’s office is cracking down on a group of kid-focused websites, enforcing a federal law that makes it illegal to track the web browsing habits of children under 13.
After a two year investigation, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced on Tuesday that his office had found evidence that four companies’ popular children’s websites didn’t comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, a federal law that limits marketing to children under 13 and requires website operators to get parental consent before collecting personal information about kids.
