New York, N.Y. October 5, 2001—The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. is pleased to announce that Ticketmaster's music information Website, LiveDaily.Com, has agreed to modify its privacy practices to help ensure that personally identifiable information is not collected from children younger than 13 years old.

LiveDaily.com is a music-oriented site that offers a variety of features such as news on recording artists, ticket information, forums, and newsletters. Among the artists featured on the site are those who have a large audience of preteen fans such as *NSYNC and Britney Spears. Recently, merchandise with appeal to younger children, such as an *NSYNC lunchbox and matching thermos, was offered on the site. CARU's Self-Regulatory Guidelines for Children's Advertising specify that where there is a reasonable expectation that children under 13 are visiting a general audience site, neutral age-screening mechanisms should be employed to determine whether parental consent is required in the collection of personal information.

Ticketmaster has agreed to implement neutral age-screening questions on its registration pages along with a tracking mechanism to prevent underage visitors who have been initially rejected, on the basis of age, from circumventing the screening process.

CARU's inquiry was conducted under NAD/NARB/CARU Procedures for Voluntary Self-Regulation of National Advertising. Details of the inquiry, CARU's decision and the advertiser's response will be included in the next NAD/CARU Case Report. Members of the press who wish to see a copy of the decision now should email CARU.

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The National Advertising Review Council (NARC) was formed in 1971 by the Association of National Advertisers, Inc. (ANA), the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Inc. (AAAA), the American Advertising Federation, Inc. (AAF), and the Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. (CBBB). Its purpose is to foster truth and accuracy in national advertising through voluntary self-regulation. NARC is the body that establishes the policies and procedures for the CBBB's National Advertising Division (NAD), The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU), and the National Advertising Review Board (NARB).

NAD and CARU are the investigative arms of the advertising industry's voluntary self-regulation program. Their casework results from competitive challenges from other advertisers, and also from self-monitoring traditional and new media, including the Internet. The National Advertising Review Board (NARB), the appeals body, is a peer group from which ad-hoc panels are selected to adjudicate those cases that are not resolved at the NAD/CARU level. This unique, self-regulatory system is funded entirely by the business community; CARU is financed by the children's advertising industry, while NAD/NARB's sole source of funding is derived from membership fees paid to the Council of Better Business Bureaus.