Kid-Oriented Websites and Mobile Apps Rely on New, Verifiable Parental Consent Service, ChildGuardOnline, to Comply with Stricter FTC COPPA Regulations

WESTPORT, Conn., May 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Imperium, an established industry leader in fraud prevention and identity validation solutions, announced today the launch of ChildGuardOnline.  The new service uses innovative, patent-pending methodology and technology to verify parental consent so websites and mobile apps can easily comply with the new Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) regulations.  ChildGuardOnline also offers parents and guardians the ability to instantly approve and proactively manage the websites they have authorized for their child's use via the service. 

COPPA was implemented in 2000 to regulate the online collection of personal information from children under the age of 13.  To comply with COPPA, many online businesses have been using a method called email plus, consisting of obtaining parental consent via an email to the parent, followed by another email to the parent to confirm consent. Over time, tech-savvy kids have made the email plus method unreliable and subject to fraud. Additionally, the method can impose considerable administrative costs for websites and mobile app providers. These are some of the reasons that the Federal Trade Commission has suggested abolishing email-plus in favor of a more advanced solution like ChildGuardOnline.

"ChildGuardOnline gives websites and mobile application providers a superior alternative to existing parental verification methods.  Our expertise in providing industry-accepted, technologically-advanced, identity validation, certification, and fraud-protection solutions makes ChildGuardOnline the most reliable choice," says Marshall Harrison, Founder and CEO of Imperium. "We employ numerous anti-fraud checks and balances to effectively validate the identity of parents or guardians before any child's site requests are approved for use, so that online businesses can feel confident that they are effectively adhering to COPPA rules," Mr. Harrison added.   

ChildGuardOnline uses a wide range of validation techniques that include: submitted address and discovered geo-location, correlation of number of children per parent, number of sites approved per parent and child, and last four digits of social security numbers to validate parent's ID.

"There is no company more well-suited than Imperium to helping child-oriented online services meet FTC regulations where COPPA is concerned. Imperium has already proved itself to be the gold standard in the market research industry with its suite of online data quality and validation services that enable companies to self-regulate their quality offerings to the market. They are well-poised to take this expertise into the arena of protecting our children online," said Simon Chadwick, Managing Partner at Cambiar, LLC, and former Board Director and Chair at CASRO.

David Zotter, CTO at Survey Sampling International added, "For many years, we have trusted  Imperium's digital fingerprinting and identity validation services (RelevantID and Verity) to accurately certify that the data we  collect is reliable and of the highest quality. ChildGuardOnline's methodology will inherently be the next-generation solution for verifying parental consent." 

About Imperium
Imperium is an established leader in fraud prevention and identity validation solutions designed to help businesses achieve high-level data integrity and comply with industry regulations.   For over 10 years, respected companies have been relying on Imperium's comprehensive suite of technological services to accurately verify self-reported personal information and restrict fraudulent online activities.  For more information visit www.imperium.com.

SOURCE Imperium