LOS ANGELES—The Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) has unveiled enhancements to its RTA program that make it even easier for operators to label their websites as being Restricted To Adults.
Now in its 30th year, ASACP is an award-winning, globally recognized, member- and sponsor-supported nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting online child safety by proactively helping parents and businesses protect children from online harms.
ASACP offers free child-protection resources for parents, Best Practices tailored to specific adult market segments, and a comprehensive Code of Ethics for all website and mobile app publishers. In addition, its CSAM Reporting Tipline has processed 1.3 million reports since its launch. These resources help companies of all sizes prevent minors from accessing age-restricted content.
Among ASACP’s key accomplishments is its RTA meta-labeling system, designed to prevent children from accessing adult web pages and apps.
An anonymous, privacy-protecting technological solution, 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.
The RTA label is free to use, voluntary, and universally available to any website that wishes to clearly label itself as inappropriate for viewing by minors.
“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,” ASACP executive director Tim Henning said. “With its newest updates, RTA is now even easier to install on a wide range of apps and websites.”
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.
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-
The second method uses an HTTP Response Header to cover all online content without modifying individual HTML files.
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 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.
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 explained. “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, an easy “verify” tool lets you paste your site’s URL into the online form to confirm it is correctly set up.
Next, the RTA Verified program will allow users to obtain a “verified” badge for their platform, demonstrating that their label usage has been audited.
“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, email [email protected].
