United States Children's Privacy and COPPA Supplement

UNITED STATES CHILDREN’S PRIVACY AND COPPA SUPPLEMENT

Under-13 launch gate, parental rights and U.S. child-data safeguards

Academic Quality. Verified.

1. Default age rule

2. When COPPA applies

COPPA applies to covered commercial online services directed to children under 13 and to other covered services with actual knowledge they are collecting personal information from a child under 13. Where applicable, Veri-AQ must provide parental notice and obtain verifiable parental consent before collection, use or disclosure, subject to the Rule’s exceptions.

3. Required launch controls for age 12

• Age-screening/verification process that does not retain more information than needed for the approved purpose.
• Direct notice to the parent describing collection, use, disclosure and rights.
• Verifiable parental consent method appropriate to the processing.
• Separate consent where the COPPA Rule requires it for applicable third-party disclosures.
• Parent access, correction/deletion and consent-revocation workflows.
• Child-data retention schedule that keeps information only as long as reasonably necessary for the specific purpose.
• Security controls and vendor contracts appropriate for children’s personal information.

4. School-authorised use

Where a school is permitted to authorise collection for an educational purpose under COPPA, Veri-AQ must use the information only to provide the requested educational service and not for unrelated commercial purposes, advertising or general model training.

5. Retention

U.S. under-13 personal information must not be retained indefinitely. Any Junior content period must be no longer than reasonably necessary for its stated educational purpose and must also remain within Veri-AQ’s current 6-month Junior content ceiling unless a shorter period applies.

6. Third-party disclosure and advertising

Child personal information is not used for behavioural advertising. Third-party disclosures are limited to service providers necessary to operate the service or other disclosures permitted by law and the applicable parental consent.

7. Parent rights

• Review the child’s personal information where required.
• Request correction or deletion where applicable.
• Revoke consent and stop future consent-based collection/use.
• Receive information about material changes that require renewed consent.

8. No corpus / training

Under-13 information is not contributed to a global comparison corpus and is not used for general AI-model training under the current Veri-AQ service.

Legal review and mandatory-law notice. This policy framework is designed for Veri-AQ operations and must be reviewed by appropriately qualified counsel before a new entity, jurisdiction, school contract, under-13 U.S. workflow or materially new processing purpose is launched. Nothing in this document excludes rights or duties that applicable law does not permit the parties to waive.

Primary legal references

• COPPA: Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, 16 CFR Part 312 — https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-coppa
• FTC EdTech Policy: FTC Policy Statement on Education Technology and COPPA — https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/Policy%20Statement%20of%20the%20Federal%20Trade%20Commission%20on%20Education%20Technology.pdf

Contact details

Website: www.veri-aq.com | Support: support@veri-aq.com | Privacy / PAIA: privacy@veri-aq.com

Principal address: Hofmeyer Rd, Centurion, South Africa, 0157