Abstract

Children’s toys have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, with a growing shift from simple physical products to toys that engage the digital world by the use of software and hardware. A smart toy is defined as a device consisting of a physical toy component that connects to a computing system with online services through network-ing and sensory technologies to enhance the functionality of a traditional toy such as Mattel’s Hello Barbie and Cognitoys Dino. Referring to the direction of the United States Federal Trade Commission Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the European Union Data Protection Directive, the definition of a child as an individual is under the age of 13 years old. In this study, the first assumption is that children do not understand the concept of privacy. Second assumption is that children will disclose as much information to people they can trust. For example, many studies found that an-thropomorphic toys serve a purpose, as children trusted such designs and felt at ease disclosing private information. Online privacy for children has been a great concern in this environment, particularly when the child’s private information is involved and can be potentially shared with other parties. For example, a new invention called “Google Toy” has caused many criticisms from the media as people express concern about pos-sible privacy breaching by Google, especially to their children at home. Privacy can result in physical safety of child user, e.g., child predators. While parents strive to en-sure their child’s physical and online safety and privacy, there is no standardized child protection framework for parental control in this paradigm. Parental control is a fea-ture in a smart toy for the parents to restrict the content the children can provide to the toy. The toy industry has also issued regulations for toy safety; however, these regula-tions have no mention of privacy. The main objective of this paper is to investigate and identify privacy requirements at legislative level, identifying privacy laws and regula-tions which apply to smart toys.

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