Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

Due to a law which became effective in April 21, 2000, no person under the age of 14 may submit his or her site for an award. This law is known as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. It requires that web sites which ask for certain information about kids under 13 require their parents permission to obtain the information.

The following is quoted from the law.

"The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and Rule apply to individually identifiable information about a child that is collected online, such as full name, home address, email address, telephone number or any other information that would allow someone to identify or contact the child. The Act and Rule also cover other types of information -- for example, hobbies, interests and information collected through cookies or other types of tracking mechanisms -- when they are tied to individually identifiable information"

Since we could not envision a method to prove conclusively that a child has the permission of his parents, we have decided in order to be compliant we cannot allow children to submit at all.