News

AgeCheq 3 offers mobile devs 'Compliance as a Service' for US and EU child privacy laws

Offers compliance with COPPA, GDPR, and PECR

AgeCheq 3 offers mobile devs 'Compliance as a Service' for US and EU child privacy laws

Update: As per Roy's comment at the bottom of the article: 

Notice and consent only occur the first time a game is encountered. Once a parent has viewed the notice and approved a game, the game starts and runs exactly as it would normally.

PrivacyCheq, the industry-leading facilitator of compliance with worldwide privacy regulations, has released version 3.0 of its AgeCheq service.

AgeCheq has been helping mobile game developers to conduct their business in accordance with the U.S. Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) - contravention of which can result in some hefty fines - since 2013.

A high-profile example of non-compliance is US studio TinyCo, which found itself on the receiving end of a $300,000 fine in 2014 after failing to update some its child-focused legacy titles to comply with new COPPA legislation.

US and beyond

But it's not just the US that presents a challenge to mobile developers, with worldwide privacy laws each coming with their own stipulations, identity methods, and ages of consent. 

As such, latest version AgeCheq 3.0 brings native language support for the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation (PECR).

The service streamlines user notice and consent activity to a few seconds in every session, following an initial account setup.

The AgeCheq 3.0 privacy dashboard is available in English, German, French and Spanish, while publishers retain control over the integration and appearance of privacy compliance in-game.

PrivacyCheq founder and CEO Roy Smith says that, given the EU ratification of the GDPR and "increased COPPA enforcement" in the US, "it's clear that content publishers who ignore child privacy regulations or handle private data improperly will lose."

"AgeCheq is the only privacy enhancing technology that is optimised for the needs of global content publishers with hundreds of millions of worldwide users, offering analytics, real time control over compliance, and an optional encrypted PII storage service that eliminates the risk of a massive data breach."

More information is available on the AgeCheq website.


Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.