LOS ANGELES, Calif. – The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) has announced enhancements to its RTA labeling program that “make it even easier” for operators to mark their websites as being “Restricted to Adults.”
The announcement noted that ASACP is now in its 30th year of operations as a nonprofit organization “dedicated to promoting online child safety by proactively helping parents and businesses protect children from online harms.”
ASACP described its RTA meta-labeling system as one of the organization’s “key accomplishments,” offering businesses a convenient means of integrating a system “designed to prevent children from accessing adult web pages and apps.”
“RTA has a long history of industry, regulator, and stakeholder acceptance due to its highly effective integration and the ease with which it strengthens parents’ oversight of their children’s internet activity,” said ASACP Executive Director Tim Henning. “With its newest updates, RTA is now even easier to install on a wide range of apps and websites.”
An anonymous, privacy-protecting technological solution, ASACP said RTA is “an unmistakable beacon for triggering parental controls and network filters, providing a perfect base layer for adding proactive child protection to any website or app and enhancing any other age-assurance technologies a platform may use.”
ASACP noted the RTA label is “free to use and universally available to any website that wishes to clearly label itself as inappropriate for viewing by minors.”
In the announcement, ASACP explained that there are “two ways to enable RTA: by placing a meta tag in your site’s HTML, or by adding an HTTP response header.”
“While both methods work well, the response header is preferred for non-HTML resources such as images and videos, and to ensure platform-wide coverage,” ASACP added.
The first and easiest method is to add the HTML meta tag to the
section of every page featuring adult content by placing this tag with any other meta tags:
meta name=”RATING” content=”RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA”
The second method uses an HTTP Response Header to “cover all online content without modifying individual HTML files,” ASACP explained.
“Some operators will embrace the one-two punch of using the meta tag along with the HTTP Response Header for a truly belt-and-suspenders approach to securing content,” the organization added. “The updated RTA labeling page offers several examples of how to implement this across a variety of platforms and servers, including Apache via .htaccess, as well as Cloudflare, Hugo, IIS, Jekyll, Next.js, Nginx, PHP, Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress. “
ASACP observed that “bulk editing is available for users with a large number of static HTML files but without a CMS, allowing them to insert the meta tag via a command-line script; with examples provided for Bash on Linux and macOS.”
“One great feature of RTA is that it works seamlessly alongside every other age verification system,” Henning said. “RTA blocks children when parental control is present, while AV blocks kids when parental control is unavailable. It’s a winning combination that protects the innocence of children along with the rights of adults.”
Once your RTA label is enabled, ASACP offers a “verify” tool that enables you to paste your site’s URL into an online form to confirm it is correctly set up. The “RTA Verified program” then allows users to obtain a “verified” badge for their site, documenting that their label usage has been audited by ASACP.
“RTA continues to be one of the association’s crown jewels, and we’re ecstatic to make it even easier to deploy,” Henning concluded. “With your support, we can make RTA an increasingly essential element in every platform’s child protection toolkit.”
To learn more about how your business can help protect itself by protecting children, or if you have questions about RTA, email tim@asacp.org. For more information about ASACP, go to ASACP.org.
