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Children’s personal data are often collected for commercial aims. Although regulations in different countries aim to protect children’s privacy (e.g., by imposing websites to request parental consent for the processing of children’s data for commercial purposes), concerns about protecting children’s online data continue to rise. This article therefore aims to get insights into parents’ and children’s privacy coping strategies and perceptions underlying these strategies. In-depth interviews with ten parents and nine children (8–11 years) were conducted. Findings show that although children engaged in avoidance (e.g., leaving the particular website) and confrontation (e.g., seeking support) strategies, they mainly did this to protect their privacy from malicious individuals—and not from commercial parties. Participating children also lacked general knowledge about both explicit and implicit data practices. To protect their children’s privacy, parents in this study mainly adopted restrictive mediation strategies, but lacked the knowledge to undertake concrete actions in the case of implicit data collection. Implications for policymakers are discussed.

While spending significant time on the internet, children are often exposed to data disclosure requests from e-service providers. However, children are not always aware of the commercial value of their data, and often struggle to understand the associated privacy risks. At the same time, scholars have stressed the importance of such knowledge in the adaptation of privacy protective behavior. This study investigates how a privacy literacy training can increase childrens (9-12) privacy literacy, how it influences their online disclosure behavior and how it affects their privacy concern regarding to different levels of privacy costs (low versus high). Using two online experiments (n = 214 and n = 366 respectively), the study shows that a training enhances childrens general understanding of data practices, and it is effective in helping them to better protect their privacy, including holding back and fabricating personal information, and to identify low privacy risks. Findings also suggest that an enhanced privacy literacy evokes more negative brand responses. Being one of the first studies to investigate actual disclosure behavior among young children, it provides a more comprehensive understanding of how children cope with their online privacy, and it proposes important implications for policy makers and educators.