Frequently Asked Questions
Will a ParentCheck ID guarantee my child will not be allowed to send out personal information?
No. ParentCheck IDs do not restrict access. For participating web sites, it's an aid to web site owners to ensure that children 13 and under do not send information without their parent's approval. By providing contact with the parents and presenting a gate the child must pass through to enter the information, a web site owner is providing parents a way to easily and inexpensively provide permission.
Does a ParentCheck ID cost me anything?
No. ParentCheck IDs and the service related to communicating between parents and children are free. Web developers created the system to satisfy the restrictions of Title XIV - Child Online Protection Act (COPA) passed in 199 and effective April 21st, 2000.
How soon will I, as a parent, be contacted once I sign up?
Given the potential volume of subscribers, you may not receive a call for quite some time. We will be choosing candidates at random to confirm their use of the system until we see the rate of sign ups and can arrange to contact everyone. If you have questions, please don't hesitate to call or write to info@parentcheck.com.
I have a web site, but I don't know who fills in my form. What does the law require of me?
The COPPA Act requires that you obtain "verifiable parental consent". Please refer to the COPPA act itself for more complete information. The paragraph defining parental consent is paragraph 9: "The term "verifiable parental consent" means any reasonable effort (taking into consideration available technology), including a request for authorization for future collection, use, and disclosure described in the notice, to ensure that a parent of a child receives notice of the operator's personal information collection, use, and disclosure practices, and authorizes the collection, use, and disclosure, as applicable, of personal information and the subsequent use of that information before that information is collected from that child."
As a web site developer, I want to know if you save the information I ask my users to give me?
We do not save your form information. The only things we save are your web site information and the fact that one of your users accessed the identity facility. Once a parent signs up, we save their email address and the visit incidents to your website by their children. Only the parent will have access to this information and it will never be used for any other purpose.
How do I add ParentCheck to my site?
Sign up as a webmaster at www.parentcheck.com. We will give you an address to use in the link or the button where you are currently calling your form. You will have given us the form address you want your user to get access to. When a visit is approved, either by confirmation of a valid ParentCheck ID or a user stating they are over 13, we will redirect your user to your form. As a result, you will not lose form access statistics in your web logs, or lose that web site visitor to another site.
What will happen when I sign up as a parent?
After you fill out the ID form, you will receive an email with a code for you to return to the system. Once you login, you will be given the ability to create ParentCheck IDs for each of your children. To withdraw permission, merely return to the site and delete the entry you make. If you want to grant permission again, later, simply come back to the site and create another ID. The old ID will no longer work.
Do webmasters ever have their ParentCheck access revoked?
If we at ParentCheck, discover that someone is using ParentCheck in violation of any provision of the COPPA Act, the ParentCheck site will block access to the ParentCheck procedures for that web site. This helps ensure the quality of service and help give parents assurance that they can rely on ParentCheck and ParentCheck enabled sites.
Is it possible for children to impersonate parents for the purpose of getting valid ParentCheck IDs?
Anyone can fill in the ParentCheck signup form as a parent. However, if the phone number proves invalid or the confirmation call turns up an irregularity, the IDs and sign up will be revoked by ParentCheck.
How do I configure my browser so that my children won't see any site with sex, language, violence and nudity ratings too high for my taste?
The Internet Content Ratings Association (and its forerunner RASC) provide a simple labeling system that is free to webmasters to identify site content. [Editorial: we think it's interesting that sex is differentiated from nudity as if anyone would object to a "nude" banana] Savvy webmasters can apply this to their sites to help filter content. To learn more about how to configure your browser to take advantage of the ratings system to the www.rasc.org (http://www.rsac.org/_en/en_parents.htmlhttp://www.rsac.org/_en/en_parents.html).