A landmark 2013 law aimed at protecting the privacy of America’s youngest mobile consumers hasn’t stopped app developers from collecting vast amounts of data, including a person’s location and even recordings of their voice, according to privacy researchers and consumer advocates.
Whether mobile app developers seek parental consent first — as required by law — or pass the information on to advertisers isn’t entirely clear. But if persons prefer to stay anonymous, their options are limited: Wade through each mobile app’s privacy policies to make sure of the terms, or stick the phone on “airplane mode” to shut off the wireless connection and risk losing functionality.
“Kids are a lucrative market, especially for apps,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “Unfortunately, there are still companies out there that are more concerned about generating revenue than protecting the privacy of kids.”
Photo: Reuters
Americans have traded vast amounts of personal data in exchange for the ease and functionality of fun mobile applications on their phones. But how is industry using that information? Chester and other consumer advocates allege that fast food chains are increasingly focusing advertising dollars on digital media, targeting blacks and Hispanics. They also warn that data from phones can be combined with offline information like home prices, race or income in ways that could violate fair lending laws. And a new site, PrivacyGrade.org, found that many popular kids’ apps like Talking Tom and Fruit Ninja collect information in ways parents wouldn’t necessarily expect.
Concerned in particular about industries’ focus on kids online, the Federal Trade Commission in July 2013 expanded the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, to require app developers to get parental consent before collecting personal data on anyone younger than 13. That includes information like the unique identifying device on a phone, a person’s phone number or a device’s location.
“It’s upped the ante for companies deciding whether they are going to market to kids,” said Michelle De Mooy of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “And that’s a good thing.”
But with the number of smartphones expected to reach 3.5 billion in the next five years, according to Forrester Research, the mobile app and advertising industry has exploded. Regulators don’t have an easy, automated way of analyzing the hundreds of mobile apps popping up each day.
Since the updated regulation went into effect, the FTC has brought about only two enforcement actions against mobile apps. Last September, the commission announced that Yelp Inc agreed to pay US$450,000 and TinyCo US$300,000 to settle separate charges that their companies knowingly collected information on young children through their mobile apps.
“Our ultimate goal is compliance,” said Kandi Parsons, an attorney in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. But “that doesn’t undermine our desire to bring cases against companies that violate COPPA ... where we find violations, we will bring cases against mobile apps.”
In 1990, Amy Chen (陳怡美) was beginning third grade in Calhoun County, Texas, as the youngest of six and the only one in her family of Taiwanese immigrants to be born in the US. She recalls, “my father gave me a stack of typed manuscript pages and a pen and asked me to find typos, missing punctuation, and extra spaces.” The manuscript was for an English-learning book to be sold in Taiwan. “I was copy editing as a child,” she says. Now a 42-year-old freelance writer in Santa Barbara, California, Amy Chen has only recently realized that her father, Chen Po-jung (陳伯榕), who
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do. “We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old said. “This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?” “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary. People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in
For anyone on board the train looking out the window, it must have been a strange sight. The same foreigner stood outside waving at them four different times within ten minutes, three times on the left and once on the right, his face getting redder and sweatier each time. At this unique location, it’s actually possible to beat the train up the mountain on foot, though only with extreme effort. For the average hiker, the Dulishan Trail is still a great place to get some exercise and see the train — at least once — as it makes its way
Jan 13 to Jan 19 Yang Jen-huang (楊仁煌) recalls being slapped by his father when he asked about their Sakizaya heritage, telling him to never mention it otherwise they’ll be killed. “Only then did I start learning about the Karewan Incident,” he tells Mayaw Kilang in “The social culture and ethnic identification of the Sakizaya” (撒奇萊雅族的社會文化與民族認定). “Many of our elders are reluctant to call themselves Sakizaya, and are accustomed to living in Amis (Pangcah) society. Therefore, it’s up to the younger generation to push for official recognition, because there’s still a taboo with the older people.” Although the Sakizaya became Taiwan’s 13th
RSS