There is a lot of focus these days on protecting our children, which is one “cause” that your Guide can get behind 100%. It’s not a tough argument that our future lies in the hands of our future generation. And today, kids are growing up quicker than ever before. For example, in the 1970’s kids seldom knew what a credit card even was – there was no need for them to even think about anything more than a few dollars in weekly allowance for candy and balsa airplanes. But children in this new millennium are used to smartphones, online games, Amazon.com and eBay. They are highly aware of the use of those 16-digit cards, and how to use them. So, one identity theft concern is how to protect your kids from identity theft, which includes protecting their personal information from friends and family who commit identity theft, and those numbers are far larger than anyone really cares to admit. In fact, your guide has identified Children’s Identity Theft as a specific type of identity theft, because there are special considerations when dealing with your child’s identity.
Although it is not the main focus, a law called the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA)(47 USC 254(1)(B) [PDF]) is geared to help in public areas where you would generally think your kids were already protected, specifically schools and libraries. Computer access has become all-pervading, and these two areas generally allow minors access to the internet with minimal adult supervision, occasionally with no supervision whatsoever. CIPA requires certification that there is an internet usage policy in place that specifically protects our kids from obscenity, pornography, or any other site that would be deemed “harmful to minors”. Simply put, even with technically savvy parents, it’s in the nature of kids to be trusting and curious. Stumbling into a chat room or website that is designed to grab their interest could be a relatively harmless marketing device from some toy manufacturer, video game company or breakfast cereal, but it could also be put up by identity thieves with the specific intent of getting private information from kids.
The intent of CIPA is specifically to protect kids from adult-oriented content that “serves the prurient interest” (that’s fancy words that mean “pornography”,) but the specific clause “…harmful to minors” could have a very broad interpretation, and will doubtless be interpreted by the courts to include phishing sites and other sites geared toward identity theft.
It’s interesting to note that there has developed a niche market for addressing the concerns brought up by CIPA. Some organizations have a fully developed staff of IT professionals who can address these needs by programming the network hardware (i.e. routers) that handle the traffic to and from the internet. But that sort of expertise does not come cheap, and a great number of organizations are turning to other solutions to address the need. Software programs in the low five-figure range have started to appear, marketed specifically to organizations covered by CIPA. These programs may or may not have additional hardware included in the package, and generally require the organization to send someone through a training class to learn how to implement and maintain the program. These are a cost-effective solution for educational institutions that are already under funded, and are looking for a way to comply with federal regulations without impacting the services they provide for our kids… which would necessarily include an education.
CIPA addresses a very thin slice of where our kids are exposed to predators looking to take advantage of them, and this particular law can be implemented with a lot of leeway, depending on where you live, because the “determination regarding the matter of what is inappropriate for minors” is to be made by the local school board, library or other similar authority, not the government. More, CIPA has come under fire more than once because it can (and often does) interfere with the first amendment right of freedom of speech. There are often exceptions made, as well, for bone fide research or other lawful purposes, and internet filters imposed in compliance with CIPA need to be suspended for adults and students using the materials for such purposes.
In all, this is a law intended to protect our kids from growing up too fast, and the identity theft aspect is more of a secondary consideration; actually it may even be more appropriate to consider it a “side effect” of CIPA. But anything that helps us protect our kids will generally be seen as a good thing.
