California Passes Law To Allow Minor Users of Online Applications To Delete Personal Information
Recently signed by Governor Brown: an amendment to Division 8 of the Business and Professions Code, relating to the Internet, this law is called “Privacy Rights for California Minors in the Digital World.” This amendment to California’s internet privacy law allows minors who are users of a website or other online services and applications to remove content themselves or request that it be removed. It forbids operators of website and other online applications listed in the statute to use minors users’ information for advertising purposes themselves and orders them to inform third parties that those third parties may not use minor users’ information for advertising purposes. The law goes into effect on January 1, 2015.
Senate Bill 568, Chapter 336. LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST
Existing law requires an operator of a commercial Web site or online service that collects personally identifiable information through the Internet about individual consumers residing in California who use or visit its commercial Web site or online service to make its privacy policy available to consumers, as specified.
Existing federal law requires an operator of an Internet Web site or online service directed to a child, as defined, or an operator of an Internet Web site or online service that has actual knowledge that it is collecting personal information from a child to provide notice of what information is being collected and how that information is being used, and to give the parents of the child the opportunity to refuse to permit the operator’s further collection of information from the child.
This bill would, on and after January 1, 2015, prohibit an operator of an Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application, as specified, from marketing or advertising specified types of products or services to a minor. The bill would prohibit an operator from knowingly using, disclosing, compiling, or allowing a 3rd party to use, disclose, or compile, the personal information of a minor for the purpose of marketing or advertising specified types of products or services. The bill would also make this prohibition applicable to an advertising service that is notified by an operator of an Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application that the site, service, or application is directed to a minor.
The bill would, on and after January 1, 2015, require the operator of an Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application to permit a minor, who is a registered user of the operator’s Internet Web site, online service, online application, or mobile application, to remove, or to request and obtain removal of, content or information posted on the operator’s Internet Web site, service, or application by the minor, unless the content or information was posted by a 3rd party, any other provision of state or federal law requires the operator or 3rd party to maintain the content or information, or the operator anonymizes the content or information. The bill would require the operator to provide notice to a minor that the minor may remove the content or information, as specified.
Read the text of the law here.