Dangerous Liaisons

Last week, Pillsbury, a Los Angeles-based law firm, used a webinar to talk about online and mobile marketing. Lawyers with expertise on the subject explained what’s legal, what’s not, and what’s changed in the area of restaurants. 
   Risky stuff included hiring vendors that use deep packet technology to target a chain’s marketing messages. Then again, dispatching unsolicited text messages can cause serious legal problems. So can emails to minors advertising, say, alcohol; companies that do so are probably breaking state law. In fact, the first two questions raised during the Q&A concerned children and technology:

Is it legal to collect email addresses of children with parental consent?
"If you have a child under 13 and parental consent," said Catherine D. Myers, who specializes in privacy and data protection, "disclosure must be clear as to what you are using the information for. In the privacy arena, generally speaking, parental consent pretty much trumps everything. Birthday clubs can get touchy, however, and Mrs. Fields Cookies got hit with $100,000 fine and a 20-year consent decree and the requirement to destroy its complete database of information collected online for the very scary reason of collecting childrens’ information to send them a free cookie on their birthday. COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) only applies for online collection if you are doing it at your shop, collecting information about kids. If you get parents consent, you are good." 

If you are marketing to children with a nationwide operation, which states do you have to comply with and which age statutes do you look toward?
"State statutes protect the children in that state. So you have Maine, which says you cannot collect information on kids under 18. And if that holds, 18 will be your standard [rule] online and offline. For online collection, the general rule is COPPA, which is 13 years of age," Meyers explained. "California says in its penal code that if you collect information from children under 16 and use that information to market to a child or their family it is a misdemeanor to do that if the parents object. 
   "If you collect information online in connection purchase or sale of goods and services, 18 is the age of contract. If you want to hold your site-user to a terms of conditions and they are under 18, they will not be held to the terms of those contracts. Keep that in mind. "