Authentication: Virtual Piggy Launches VP Authenticate

• The niche specialist Virtual Piggy focusing on e-payment for under-21 online users launches a new authentication service celled VP Authenticate™. This free feature enables merchants to identify young purchasers and obtain parental consent when their platform is being used. VP Authenticate will make it possible to identify both children and parents and ensure their consent.

• Under-18 users enter their identifiers thus triggering the verification process. Once the parents/children links ascertained, Virtual Piggy returns the consent to the e-commerce website.

• This evolution occurs as the Federal Trade Commission is getting ready to rethink the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and plans to eliminate the use of “e-mail plus” deemed unreliable and, until recently, favoured by Virtual Piggy too; this two steps age verification procedure was based on the parents’ e-mail address.

Source: Virtual Piggy press release

• The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, in force since 1998, applies to the online collection of data referring to under-13 people. This Act lists various requirements with which market players have to comply (privacy protection, parental consent, etc.). The FTC, fully aware of the part to be played by social media and mobile devices in the new online payments ecosystem, expresses concern and is about to reset its documentation accordingly.

• FTC’s 2011 recommendations aimed at updating the COPPA through redefining the term personal information (adding in geolocation data and cookies) and parental consent mechanism (signed scans, videoconferencing, IDs, etc.). These recommendations have recently been further detailed with a new set of propositions, among which:

• Adoption of persistent identifiers,
• Coverage of data gathered by plug-ins, downloading software and ads networks,
• Coverage of non-under-18 only websites likely to receive them.