Protecting Children’s Data in Customer Support: COPPA Compliance with Isara
If your organisation offers products or services to children under 13 — from educational platforms to games or family apps — the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) applies to you. COPPA governs how businesses collect, use, and share children’s personal information online, and violations can lead to serious fines and reputational damage.
While most companies focus on making their websites and sign-up flows compliant, one critical area is often missed: customer support. Every chat, email, or support ticket can contain personal data from children or their parents. Without oversight, these communications can easily fall outside compliance boundaries.
That’s where Isara comes in — providing compliance and privacy teams with a way to audit support tickets for COPPA compliance, identify sensitive data involving minors, and strengthen privacy governance across all support operations.
Understanding COPPA and its requirements
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), enforced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), requires online services that collect personal information from children under 13 to:
Provide clear notice of data practices.
Obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting or using a child’s data.
Limit data collection to information necessary for participation.
Maintain the confidentiality, security, and integrity of the data collected.
Allow parents to review or delete their child’s personal information.
COPPA’s definition of “personal information” is broad — it includes names, email addresses, photos, voice recordings, geolocation data, persistent identifiers, and more.
Many organisations comply at the front end — ensuring their sign-up forms and APIs are compliant — but overlook the back end, where sensitive data often surfaces in support channels.
The hidden risk in customer support interactions
When parents or children contact support, they often share personal details without realising the regulatory implications. Examples include:
Children providing their real name or username to recover a password.
Parents emailing birth dates or contact details to verify an account.
Screenshots containing in-app messages or personal identifiers.
Attachments or chat transcripts containing photos or recorded voices.
Helpdesk systems such as Intercom, Zendesk, and HubSpot weren’t designed to detect or control children’s data. As a result, organisations can unintentionally store large amounts of child-related personal information in ticket archives — information that may violate COPPA’s storage and disclosure requirements.
Even well-meaning teams can’t manually monitor every conversation. That’s where automated auditing becomes essential.
Introducing Isara: AI-powered audits for COPPA compliance
Isara enables organisations to audit support tickets for compliance with COPPA, giving compliance and privacy leaders the visibility they need to ensure sensitive information from minors is identified, controlled, and protected.
Using AI-driven data detection models, Isara analyses support communications and attachments within systems like Intercom, Zendesk, and HubSpot to detect:
Children’s personal identifiers such as names, usernames, or birth dates.
Parent contact information related to verification or consent.
Potential child-generated content, including messages or uploaded images.
Retention risks, where minor-related data remains stored beyond necessity.
Audits can be scoped by date range — such as the past week, month, or term — providing a repeatable and defensible method for privacy assurance.
With Isara, you can move from reactive spot-checking to proactive oversight, building confidence that your operations meet COPPA’s strict expectations.
How Isara supports COPPA compliance obligations
COPPA RequirementHow Isara HelpsNotice and TransparencyIdentifies instances where children’s data appears outside declared collection channels.Verifiable Parental ConsentHelps locate parent–child communications that require review for consent documentation.Data Minimisation and RetentionFlags unnecessary or outdated data related to minors in support archives.Security and ConfidentialitySupports technical safeguards by identifying sensitive content that may need redaction.Parental Access and Deletion RightsSimplifies data discovery when parents request record access or deletion.
By aligning directly with COPPA’s compliance areas, Isara enables teams to demonstrate ongoing due diligence and strengthen privacy governance.
Integration and security built for peace of mind
Isara integrates directly with your existing support platforms through official app-store connections. Once installed, it operates securely within your environment — meaning there’s no data export and no third-party processing of sensitive communications.
This design ensures:
Security: Children’s and parents’ data remain under your control.
Simplicity: Launch audits quickly without disrupting workflows.
Continuity: Compliance monitoring runs quietly in the background.
For organisations handling youth data, maintaining tight control of information is not optional — and Isara helps make that control visible.
Beyond compliance: building trust with families
COPPA compliance is more than a regulatory checkbox — it’s about earning the trust of parents and educators who rely on your platform to safeguard their children’s privacy.
By auditing your support operations with Isara, you can:
Demonstrate accountability in how you handle children’s personal data.
Reduce audit risk by identifying potential issues before regulators do.
Show transparency to partners, schools, and families.
Build long-term loyalty by proving your commitment to protecting young users.
This capability is currently available for early access and private demos as we prepare for public release. Organisations participating in early access are already using Isara to strengthen COPPA compliance and improve governance over support communications.
Make child data protection part of your culture with Isara
Protecting children’s privacy is one of the most important responsibilities any organisation can have. With Isara, you can make that responsibility measurable, verifiable, and embedded in everyday operations.
Get in touch today to request a demo and see how Isara helps you audit support tickets, protect young users’ data, and maintain effortless COPPA compliance.