FTC: Mobile App Developers Still Failing to Protect Kids

Part of your Web Presence & SEO Strategy is a Good Idea by Krista LaRiviere, gShift Labs

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a report on mobile apps for children that criticizes their trampling of kids' privacy. The FTC report, "Mobile Apps for Kids: Disclosures Still Not Making the Grade" (PDF), follows up its first report on the subject – and like nearly all sequels, it's bad.

There isn't much positive news about apps aimed at and used by children, and the FTC wants to see industry take more of a role in protecting the young and less of a role in taking money from their parents' wallets.

"While we think most companies have the best intentions when it comes to protecting kids' privacy, we haven't seen any progress when it comes to making sure parents have the information they need to make informed choices about apps for their kids. In fact, our study shows that kids' apps siphon an alarming amount of information from mobile devices without disclosing this fact to parents," said FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz. "All of the companies in the mobile app space, especially the gatekeepers of the app stores, need to do a better job. We'll do another survey in the future and we will expect to see improvement."

The report involved a study of hundreds of apps from the App Store and Google Play and the sorts of information that they provided in their disclosures. If the researchers could find the disclosures what they found was usually pretty disappointing.

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