CCAI Releases Annual Compliance Report; Welcomes Additional Members to Initiative

The Children’s Confection Advertising Initiative (CCAI) recently released its Annual Report, demonstrating excellent compliance and a positive outlook as more companies uphold their commitment to avoid advertising food and beverage products to children under 12. The nine confection companies that participate in CCAI join the five larger confection companies that are already members of the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) that do not advertise to children. Like CARU, both of these self-regulatory programs are administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus (CBBB).

Compliance of the CCAI participants was assessed by CFBAI's independent monitoring of child-directed media (including programming on television, print, radio, and digital media like apps and YouTube channels). Newer members of the initiative are bound to receive an assessment in CCAI’s 2018 report, to be released next year.

The CCAI was established by CBBB in partnership with the National Confectioners Association in March 2016, to create a self-regulatory program for small-to-medium confection companies, with the aim of promoting responsible advertising towards children.

Maureen Enright, director of CCAI is pleased with the participants' voluntary commitment to improving the landscape of food advertising to children.

To learn more about CCAI, visit them online.

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

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