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Welcome to Children's Advertising Review Unit






The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) was founded in 1974 to promote responsible children's advertising as part of a strategic alliance with the major advertising trade associations through the National Advertising Review Council (comprising the AAAA, the AAF, the ANA and the CBBB). CARU is the children's arm of the advertising industry's self-regulation program and evaluates child-directed advertising and promotional material in all media to advance truthfulness, accuracy and consistency with its Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising and relevant laws.

CARU's basic activities are the review and evaluation of child-directed advertising in all media, and online privacy practices as they affect children. When these are found to be misleading, inaccurate, or inconsistent with CARU's Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising, CARU seeks change through the voluntary cooperation of advertisers.

As an extension of its initial mission, to help advertisers deal sensitively with the child audience in a responsible manner, in 1996 CARU added a section to its Guidelines that highlight issues, including children's privacy, that are unique to the Internet and online sites directed at children age 12 and under. These Guidelines served as the basis of the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). CARU has established a Safe Harbor Program for our supporters to help them protect the privacy of children online, and meet the requirements of COPPA and our Guidelines.

CARU's Self-Regulatory Guidelines are deliberately subjective, going beyond the issues of truthfulness and accuracy to take into account the uniquely impressionable and vulnerable child audience.

CARU recognizes that the special nature and needs of a youthful audience require particular care and diligence on the part of advertisers. Consequently, CARU performs a high level of monitoring, including the scrutinizing of over ten thousand television commercials, and the review of advertisements in print, radio and online media.

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CARU Speaks at Community Board in Manhattan

CARU staff attorney Andra Dallas gave a presentation to Community Board 1, serving lower Manhattan on Monday, December 7 th .  Andra spoke to the Board’s Youth Committee about the importance of teaching children about understanding advertising and safe online practices.  District Manager Noah Pfefferblit remarked, “thank you for your informative presentation to our Youth Committee members,” and offered the Board’s assistance if they “can be helpful to the important efforts at the Children's Advertising Review Unit.” Are you interested in having a CARU staff member visit your community board? Contact adallas@caru.bbb.org.

i-Dressup Shuts Down in Wake of Privacy Breach and COPPA Violation

I-Dressup, a fashion-themed social website for teens, has completely shut down as part of a settlement with the New Jersey Department of Consumer Affairs, following a massive privacy breach and violations of the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and New Jersey state law. In September 2016, a hacker sent 2.2 million i-Dressup account credentials to technology blog Arstechnica as well as to haveibeenpwned.com, a searchable online database of data breaches. Responding to the news, New Jersey investigators discovered that 2,519 of the compromised accounts belonged to New Jersey children below age 13. I-Dressup, allegedly aware that it had child users, had violated COPPA by failing to obtain verifiable parental consent prior to collecting and processing personal information from the children, including first and last names and email addresses. In a consent decree with the New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Gerwal, parent company Unixiz has closed i-Dressup,

Kids Internet Design and Safety Act Seeks to Protect Children from Harmful Online Content

United States Senators, Mr. Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut and Mr. Edward Markey from Massachusetts, introduced a new bill referred to as the Kids Internet Design and Safety Act (the “KIDS Act”). One of the Senator’s introducing the KIDS Act, Mr. Edward Markey, was the co-author of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”). The KIDS Act seeks to include noteworthy advertising rules and create new protections for children online, specifically for online users under the age of 16. The proposed advertising rules within the KIDS Act are to ban websites from: (1) exposing young online users to advertisements “with embedded interactive elements”; (2) recommending any content involving alcohol, nicotine, or tobacco to young online users; and (3) recommending content that includes influencer marketing, like unboxing videos, or host-selling to young online users. Additionally, the KIDS Act seeks to prohibit certain online features to protect children, like prohibiting