McLean, VA – The Media Trust, the global leader in monitoring and protecting the online and mobile advertising ecosystem, today announced that Media Scanner for Data Protection enables websites to achieve and maintain ongoing compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a United States federal law that protects the privacy of children under 13. Passed by the U.S. Congress passed in 1998, this bill took effect in April 2000, with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) responsible for enforcement. In recent months, the FTC has stepped up its enforcement efforts, securing high-profile judgments against a popular online review site and a mobile app developer, charging both companies knowingly collected personal information from children under 13 years of age. The subsequent penalties were significant, with one violator assessed a penalty of $300,000 and the other $450,000.
The Media Trust’s Media Scanner for Data Protection ensures a website with child-centric content is always 100% COPPA compliant, enabling the website to avoid these costly penalties and negative publicity. By continuously scanning a client’s website and all the ad tags served to the site on a continuous, 24/7 basis, Media Scanner detects and analyzes all the vendors, domains and data tracking elements interacting with the site, which includes all the tracking performed by third parties providing ads, content or site-related services. The solution sends real-time alerts on any new vendor, domain or cookie activity so the client has actionable information to resolve the issue with their data, analytics and advertising partners quickly and efficiently.
From a large array of servers located in 500 cities spread across six continents, which utilize many browser/OS combinations and automated user-interactions, the Media Scanner solution scans a client’s website and, if applicable, ad tags at the appropriate frequencies, which provides the client with:
- Immediate notification and alerting to quickly resolve any potential COPPA violations
- Granular visibility and continuous control of all the vendors, domains and cookies accessing their website, as well as detailed information on how long each element has been there and its purpose or function
- 24/7 in-house, on-shore technical support
- Comprehensive, yet flexible reporting that provides the detailed visibility and control needed to manage and protect the site
The solution also provides detailed background information on each of the domains and cookies present in the scan execution, including:
- Vendor name and parent company, if relevant
- Company description
- Company contact information
- Service(s) provided
- Browser cookie classification and purpose
Furthermore, the solution easily lets the client define their own white list and black list of domains and cookies, which they can change or modify at any time. With this approach, the client only focuses its time on domains and cookies detected that are new or prohibited.
