DPDP rules for children's personal data

The child data provisions are among the most operationally demanding in the framework, because they require verification machinery, not just policy text.

Eighteen is the line

The Act defines a child as an individual who has not completed the age of eighteen years. There is no lower tier in the definition; the Act does allow the government, for a Data Fiduciary it is satisfied processes children's data in a verifiably safe manner, to notify an age above which that fiduciary is exempt from some or all of the consent and tracking obligations. The definition of child stays at eighteen.

What the Act prohibits outright

Beyond consent, section 9 prohibits processing likely to cause any detrimental effect on the wellbeing of a child, and prohibits tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising directed at children. For consumer products this is frequently the harder constraint, because it reaches analytics and advertising architecture, not just sign up flows.

What verifiable parental consent requires

Rule 10 requires technical and organisational measures to ensure verifiable parental consent before processing a child's personal data, with due diligence that the individual identifying as the parent is an identifiable adult. The rule gives two verification paths and illustrates them with four concrete cases; the verifiable consent deep dive walks them one by one.

Rule 11 adds the parallel duty for lawful guardians of persons with disability: verify that the guardian is appointed by a court, designated authority or local level committee under the applicable guardianship law.

The exemptions are conditional

Certain classes of Data Fiduciaries and purposes are exempt from parts of section 9, subject to the conditions in the Fourth Schedule. The classes and conditions are being ingested on this site with verification; whether an educational or health context fits one is a legal judgment, not a default.

What to do

Run the children's data checker to see which duties are in play for you. The official texts live at Rule 10, Rule 11 and Rule 12.