Online Safety for Kids

The Walt Disney Company is committed to offering children and families safe and fun online entertainment experiences. Disney Interactive Media Group has been vigilant about online safety for children since Disney.com first launched in 1996, from involvement in setting industry standards as the Web emerged to collaborative efforts with online safety leaders.

Since the enactment of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) in 1998, Disney has carefully followed the development of the Federal Trade Commission's regulatory framework for children's information. As technology continues to evolve at lightning speed, Disney is committed to adapting rapidly to changes in technology to provide a safe and fun experience for children and families.

Disney's online sites for children have programs that help keep kids safe online.
(Clockwise from left: Club Penguin, Disney.com, DisneyFairies.com)

Our Approach

Disney Online uses a combination of many safety programs. They include parental controls and live moderators, as well as specialized software and tools that allow communication and social interaction while at the same time protecting Guests and their privacy. While Disney focuses significant resources on keeping children safe online, active parental involvement, oversight and guidance are essential to this mission. From the start, we build content that limits and/or avoids opportunities to exchange personal information.

Moderation and Filters
At Disney Online, dedicated teams monitor use of the site, looking for attempts to exchange personally identifiable information (PII) as well as other inappropriate behavior. With worldwide real-time human moderation teams and regularly updated software filters, we then enact progressive disciplinary action for rule offenders and will contact relevant governmental authorities when necessary.

Parental Involvement
Disney believes that caregiver involvement is one of the most important tools to keep children safe online. Accordingly, we provide multiple levels of parental controls that allow parents to determine the amount of chat functionality available to their children. Disney Online provides safety guidelines and information for parents and children to review together. This information highlights how to behave when interacting socially online.

Children's Privacy Policy
We recognize the need to provide special privacy protections when children visit our sites. For this reason, in addition to our overall online privacy policy, we have created a "Kids' Privacy Policy" posted on Disney sites geared to children. This policy is designed to answer questions regarding our privacy policies and principles with respect to children under the age of 13. Click here to view our Children's Privacy Policy.

Online Environments
We aim to create online environments that are Disney story-driven and provide context for appropriate online conversations. These environments are specially designed to make inappropriate behavior easier to recognize. We believe that within the context of stories, there are ample opportunities for rich interactive experiences that are safe and fun.

For example, Disney Fairies is an online immersive world where Guests can create their very own personalized Fairy and interact with one another. Players can chat, use emoticons (emotion icons) and work with other Fairies within the online world to accomplish group tasks and quests. Players are encouraged to follow the rules and to encourage others to do the same. In efforts to ensure safety in chatting, we leverage a sophisticated combination of live human moderators and highly specialized technology tools designed to protect Guests and their privacy while permitting communication and social interaction. The moderation tools filter every message to allow only pre-approved, white-list words and block attempts to communicate problem phrases and personally identifiable information.

For more information about online safety, please visit the Disney online safety site.