EdLaw
Puerto Rico — Ley 185-2024 (privacidad cibernética de menores)
Puerto Rico's children's online-privacy statute, in force since 1 March 2025. It regulates "Páginas o Aplicaciones de Internet de Redes Sociales" — social-media sites and apps — that allow registration of users aged eighteen or under, layering on top of federal COPPA (which it expressly defers to for under-13s, Artículo 4).
Statute text is Spanish (the authentic language); this README is curation.
Applicability to EdTech
- Scope turns on the four-part social-media definition (Art. 2(d)): user-generated content shown to others, public/visible profiles, social interaction between users, and publishing content visible to other users. Email services and cloud-storage-only apps are expressly excluded. A learning platform is outside scope on this test unless it grows community features (student profiles visible to other users plus content sharing between them) — re-assess whenever collaboration features ship for Puerto Rico schools.
- If in scope, the duties are substantial: no publication/disclosure of a known minor's personal information without parental consent (Art. 4(a)); retention/sale limited to what is reasonably necessary for the service (Art. 4(b)); no profiling of known minors save necessity or a compelling best-interest purpose (Art. 4(c)); precise-geolocation limits (Art. 4(e)); privacy settings configurable at registration, not buried in defaults (Art. 4(f)); account and data deletion on request within 45 days (Art. 4(g)–(h)).
- "Menor de edad" is eighteen (18) years or less (Art. 2(g)) — broader than COPPA's under-13.
Contents
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| PRIVACIDAD-CIBERNETICA.md | Artículos 1–8 in full (definitions, scope and duties, NET jurisdiction, penalties, vigencia) |
Enforcement
Negociado de Telecomunicaciones de Puerto Rico (NET) has exclusive and primary jurisdiction (Art. 5, Art. 7). Civil penalty of up to $25,000 per infraction — note the enacted text carries an errata, reading "veinticinco mil diez mil dólares ($25,0000.00)"; the press coverage and NET describe the cap as $25,000.
Related
- US COPPA — federal floor for under-13s, expressly preserved by Art. 4
- PR Ley 111-2005 — breach notification
- PR Ley 85-2018 (expedientes escolares) — school records
Sources
Meta
Statute text in PRIVACIDAD-CIBERNETICA.md is reproduced verbatim in Spanish from the OGP Biblioteca Virtual consolidated PDF (Rev. 17 de septiembre de 2024) by tools/pr-ogp/build_pr.py; verify re-fetches and fails on a newer Rev. stamp. OGP compilations are the executive's maintained reference texts, not the official compilation — see the document's Meta section.