SantaStandards.com has launched today in advance of the 2011 holiday season to give parents a guide for providing a safe experience for children with Santa Claus online. The site links and ranks Santa websites against established child safety standards and grades their performance. The purpose of Santa Standards.com is to advocate child safety practices on Santa venues online and to promote the education of the historical Santa with this generation’s children.
All sites are judged by five separate criteria. First is Child Safety. The Children Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, is a minimal standard for Santa websites. Those standards ensure parental consent in acquiring and using child information such as email. SantaStandards.com does not believe any Santa website needs to require, use or maintain ANY child’s personal information when seek Santa online. Wishlists, questions for Santa or other features can easily be designed in such a way that email information need not be disclosed. The highest rated sites at SantaStandards.com comply with that requirement.
Internet crimes against children is the fastest growing method of child exploitation and victimization today. SantaStandards.com’s mission is to ensure that NO Santa venue is used in this fashion.
Some Santa sites have issues with advertising images that are not family friendly. These are generally ads of a contextual variety that use information culled from the site content or information already stored in a computer browser to serve up ads that are seen. Many Santa websites using these ad revenue programs do not filter them for family friendly viewing so that a child could see an ad for a dating site or even a risque image for sexual enhancement products. SantaStandards.com condemns any site unable to keep family friendly control over their site pages.
A post privacy policy on any website is now a common practice in the Internet industry and many Santa websites do not have them. Information is the currency of the Internet and even passively collected information can be profitable for a website that gathers it. Every site needs to disclose all methods of information gathering and what that information is used for. That is the purpose of a privacy policy. Every Santa site should have one.
Some Santa-related venues are charging for access to Santa Claus. This is also against standards set forth by SantaStandards.com. Every child should have free and unfettered access to Santa Claus.
And finally, the historical character of St. Nicholas and even the charming basis of the modern Santa has taken a beating in Hollywood productions, music, and on the Internet and an effort must be made to restore the honor, dignity and respect of Santa Claus. SantaStandards.com works to ensure that continual education and restoration of the character of Santa Claus as a role model is promoted through the sites reviewed and catalogued at SantaStandards.com.
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