Press Release

SuperAwesome launches Kid-Safe Filter to prevent online ads from stealing children’s personal data

SuperAwesome’s anti-tracker technology now allows any company to ensure their ads are never capturing personal data on children engaging with their content

NEW YORK (12/6/2018)​ SuperAwesome, the pioneering technology company behind many of the kidtech tools used to ensure children’s digital privacy, today announced the release of their KidSafe Filter (KSF). KSF ensures that every digital ad is stripped of all trackers, ensuring that no personal data is ever captured on children. KSF can be used by kids content creators and publishing platforms to ensure that their income doesn’t come from ads that are inappropriate or that collect personal data from children.

Over 170,000 children are going online for the first time ​every day​ (​source: Unicef)​ . However as they engage with apps and sites, ad technology originally designed for adults is capturing millions of pieces of personal data on their behaviour (e.g. cookies and retargeting). SuperAwesome research​ shows that by the time a child is 13, over 72 million pieces of personal data will have been captured about them. Digital privacy laws like COPPA (in the US) and GDPR-K (in Europe) have been enacted to make this illegal but the majority of the Internet remains driven by this kind of data-harvesting technology. Last week, Oath/AOL was fined $5M for breaching COPPA (the largest fine in COPPA history) and capturing personal data on hundreds of thousands of children.

Integrated into the ad-delivery workflow, the KidSafe Filter acts as a firewall for online ads, ensuring that any filtered ad has no ability to collect personal data on children. It also prevents any third party systems from accidentally storing this type of data without knowing that kids are involved. This is now a requirement by law in the US (COPPA) and the EU (GDPR-K).

As the ‘kidtech’ layer for privacy and filtering becomes standard for all companies engaging with children, SuperAwesome’s tools have become the industry choice for hundreds of companies including Mattel, Disney and Spin Master. The KSF is a critical kidtech component which should be used by every player in the kids digital media ecosystem.

Joshua Wohle, SuperAwesome CTO stated “There is a critical need for more kidtech infrastructure to ensure that our most vulnerable audience is being protected from illegal personal data collection. With the KSF, there is now absolutely no excuse for every company in the digital advertising chain to be 100% kid-safe and compliant.” He continued, “Children have become the fastest growing online audience and every company engaging with them directly or indirectly needs to have a clear kids digital privacy strategy”.

Earlier this year SuperAwesome launched the first embeddable video player designed for children’s digital privacy, replacing YouTube as a default solution for kids content publishers.