Niantic has just announced a new and upcoming log-in platform for Pokemon GO, targeted at kids and parents who want more control over kids’ information that is shared with Niantic and their partners.
The platform is called Niantic Kids and is in co-development with SuperAwesome, industry veterans in the field of kid authentication, information security and information sharing. Once it goes live, it’s expected that parents will be able to completely control their kid’s private information that Niantic collects.
The official blog post states the following: “Parents can register with Niantic Kids to manage their child’s privacy via the parent portal. Niantic Kids helps you review and approve your child’s permissions before they can play and provides options to control the personal information shared in Pokémon GO.”
It’s not yet clear what the “personal information” clause entails, but it is possible that kids will have a limited / different version of the Pokemon GO’s latest Friendship and Trading feature, and presumably, a different version of PvP experience once it’s released.
We’ve reached out to Niantic’s press contacts with the following questions, but no response has been given yet:
- Will Niantic Kids allow kids to participate in Trading and other age limited features?
- How does Niantic Kids influence kids’ Pokemon GO experience?
About SuperAwesome
As far as SuperAwesome goes, it seems they are pretty straightforward with their business model:
“SuperAwesome powers the kids digital media ecosystem. Our kidtech is used by hundreds of brands and content-owners to enable safe, digital engagement with the global under-13 audience. Built specifically to ensure total digital privacy (COPPA/GDPR-K) for children, our technology footprint reaches almost half a billion kids across North America, Europe and APAC.” – source
They provide a set of rules and policies that parents can modify and in that way control third-party access to children’s information. SuperAwesome highlights four big features for their existing product line-up:
- Safely monetize your kids content with COPPA/GDPR-K compliant advertising from the world’s top brands
- Engage your under-13 users with our kid-safe social content platform
- COPPA/GDPR-K authentication for kid-safe registration and data-collection
- Age-gates, parent portals and other essential tools for building kids apps and sites
Our take on the matter
Many have reported issues with the Pokemon website and managing children information using TPCI’s web tools. It seems that Niantic Kids is a great solution for parents and children that play together, especially if the parents want more control.
Sounds fair and square in our eyes and we look forward to seeing how this works.