New proposed privacy law reforms better protect children's personal information

UNICEF Australia welcomes the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's release of a draft Children’s Online Privacy Code, which includes new rules which require organisations to ensure they consider the best interests of children before collecting, using or disclosing their personal information.

Quotes attributable to John Livingstone, Head of Digital Policy at UNICEF Australia:

• While everyone has been talking about the social media ban, Australia has been pushing ahead with reform that is potentially even more impactful: updating our privacy laws.
• Children’s data is being collected and used at unprecedented levels, which is why UNICEF Australia welcomes the release today of a draft Children’s Online Privacy Code to better protect children online.
• The draft Code recognises that young people’s information needs extra care, and should not be collected, shared or sold without strong safeguards in place.
• This reform will better protect children’s personal information in an online world that we know many parents feel is hard to control.
• This Code helps shift responsibility away from families constantly managing settings and fine print, and puts more responsibility on tech companies to handle children’s data safely and transparently.
• The Code represents a significant boost in providing greater protections for children online. This includes everything from minimising the amount of data collected, mandating that data is only collected when in a child’s best interests, and requiring that lengthy privacy notices be re-written in child-friendly language.
• Every time a young person is recommended a video on social media, or has that eerie feeling that their phone knows how they’re feeling, it’s because of the mass collection and use of their data. If we want to better protect children online, then we need to go to the source, and creating new protections for their data is one way we can do this.