App Association: App Store Age-Verification Laws Trigger COPPA
App store age-verification laws like those in Texas will result in costly children’s privacy compliance for general audience-directed apps, ACT | The App Association said Friday.
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Signed into law in May, SB-2420 mandates that app stores obtain parental consent before a minor can download an app (see 2505270048).
SB-2420 “requires app stores to develop a system to get parental consent for the download of the application and to send a notification or ‘flag’ to each app upon that approval,” said ACT. “If the user is under 13, this flag would constitute actual knowledge under COPPA for any app that receives it. If the operator proceeds to initiate the download, the app would necessarily begin collecting data on the minor, such as IP address and device ID, which is considered personally identifiable information under COPPA.”
ACT noted that if apps don’t have COPPA compliance programs in place in this scenario, “they would immediately be in violation of federal law. Some have estimated that this would lead to imposing $70 billion in compliance costs on app developers at large.”