Thousands of Android Apps Are Tracking Kids Without Parental Consent

Thousands of Android Apps Are Tracking Kids Without Parental Consent

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Following Facebook’s data leaking scandal with Cambridge Analitica, a lot of people have turned their attention to other social networks that might be doing the same thing. It turns out that we ought to be looking towards mobile apps as well, at least on Android, as a newly released study revealed.
It’s one thing to track adults on Facebook or through other means, but tracking children it feels even more despicable. And they companies doing this actively have a very good reason for it, and it’s usually all about making money.
According to Education Week, a study named “’Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?’ Examining COPPA Compliance at Scale” was published in the Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies journal. It underlines that a large number of Android apps might be violating the federal laws in the United States by tracking minors and gathering data without the express permission of their parents.
COPPA stands for Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and it’s supposed to protect children under the age of 13, and it refers specifically to gathering personal information without parental consent.
What’s even worse is that there are literally thousands of such apps, with most of them still available for download today. The study covered 5,855 popular Android apps released between November 2016 and March 2018.

Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/thousands-of-android-apps-are-tracking-kids-without-parental-consent-520696.shtml
Submitted by: Arnfried Walbrecht

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