[citricsquid]

wait wait wait, surely putting "You cannot use this website if you are under 13" in their terms of service is enough? I know COPPA is pretty ridiculous but if they require actual proactive enforcement of no under 13s they would literally break the internet.

I thought that there were 2 options with COPPA compliance: Allow <13s to register and have an email sent to their parents IF they select that they are under 13 OR disallow under 13s through a terms of service "Do not register if you are under 13" type clause. Is that not compliant?

[BoyWizard]

I'm not an expert, but I imagine there's something in there about if you know people under 13 are using your product and they shouldn't be, you have to proactively do something about it. Facebook delete accounts belonging to minors, perhaps Path weren't and this played into it?

[Terretta]

> wait wait wait, surely putting "You cannot use this website if you are under 13" in their terms of service is enough?

Absolutely categorically not.

A ToS clause alone has been tested and found not compliant.

For a while, when the ToS clause was tested and failed, the panic reaction acid test was asking for a valid CC.

Over the past decade best practice has relaxed to a gating page asking for confirmation of over age, or, for the more cautious, asking for the user to explicitly provide their birth year (not birthday).