The Federal Trade Commission has put a more contemporary stamp on a 1998 law designed to protect kids’ privacy online. The 1998 law, called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, has long prevented sites from gathering information (names, addresses, etc.) from users younger than 13 without parental consent. At the time the law was passed, most online activities were sequestered to the family desktop. Now, 15 years later, society is awash in technology; and most people, including most children, spend much of their online time on their smartphones and surfing social networking sites (often filled with their own special portals and apps that might collect data on users). The tweaked law expands those protective measures to other sites that cater to children or might have users who are children. “The…revisions which we are announcing today are a critical piece in our overall approach to how we deal with consumer privacy in this technological age,” said commission member Julie Brill. (New York Times)

Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife, Wendy, and two children. Follow him on Twitter.