Monday, August 7, 2017

Lawsuit says Disney apps track kids without parent's permission

This seems pretty important:
Disney has been sued in America for allegedly collecting children's personal information without getting parents' approvals. 
class-action lawsuit [PDF] filed Thursday in northern California accuses the unstoppable children's entertainment brand and three of its developer partners of violating privacy laws by tracking the locations and activities of kids who use their mobile games – without first asking parents to approve the activity. 
Named plaintiff Amanda Rushing is suing on behalf of herself and a class of all parents whose kids played "Disney Princess Palace Pets" and 42 other Disney-branded smartphone and tablet games that allegedly run afoul of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). 
According to the suit, the Disney apps for both iOS and Android do not ask for parental permission before they use software development kits that assign unique identifiers to users and then use those identifiers to track the location of the users, as well as activities in-game and across multiple devices. The data is then fed to advertisers to serve up targeted ads.

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