SCENARIO -
Please use the following to answer the next question:
Matt went into his son’s bedroom one evening and found him stretched out on his bed typing on his laptop.
“Doing your homework?” Matt asked hopefully.
“No,” the boy said. “I’m filling out a survey.”
Matt looked over his son’s shoulder at his computer screen. “What kind of survey?”
“It’s asking questions about my opinions.”
“Let me see,” Matt said, and began reading the list of questions that his son had already answered. “It’s asking your opinions about the government and citizenship. That’s a little odd. You’re only ten.”
Matt wondered how the web link to the survey had ended up in his son’s email inbox. Thinking the message might have been sent to his son by mistake he opened it and read it. It had come from an entity called the Leadership Project, and the content and the graphics indicated that it was intended for children. As Matt read further he learned that kids who took the survey were automatically registered in a contest to win the first book in a series about famous leaders.
To Matt, this clearly seemed like a marketing ploy to solicit goods and services to children. He asked his son if he had been prompted to give information about himself in order to take the survey. His son told him he had been asked to give his name, address, telephone number, and date of birth, and to answer questions about his favorite games and toys.
Matt was concerned. He doubted if it was legal for the marketer to collect information from his son in the way that it was. Then he noticed several other commercial emails from marketers advertising products for children in his son’s inbox, and he decided it was time to report the incident to the proper authorities.
How could the marketer have best changed its privacy management program to meet COPPA “Safe Harbor” requirements?