FTC Finds Kids App Developers Doing Better Job Notifying Users on Information Being Collected, Shared

FTC Paralegal Specialist Christina Yeung wrote in a blog post Thursday. It followed the conclusion of the FTC Office of Technology Research and Investigations’ follow-up survey on kids apps. Surveys from 2012 found many apps shared kids’ information with third parties without notifying parents, and parents had little to no access to information about the apps’ privacy practices, an FTC news release said Thursday announcing a series of blog posts that included the survey’s findings. “The new survey looked at 364 kids’ apps in Google Play and the Apple App Store, and in today’s post the FTC examined what privacy disclosures are available to parents,” the release said. One-hundred sixty-four “of them (45%) had privacy policies that could be viewed from a direct link on the app store page,” Cohen and Yeung said. “An additional 38 include privacy policies in harder-to-find places -- for example, within the app or on the app developer’s webpage,” they said. “We don’t know for certain why there has been an increase in easy-to-locate privacy policies since our last survey, but a few factors may have contributed to this welcome development,” like widening the definition of children’s personal information under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, and an agreement between California and major mobile platform providers to have a privacy policy available, Cohen and Yeung said. “Whatever the reasons for the increase in direct links to kids’ app privacy policies, it’s a step in the right direction,” they wrote. “That said, a significant portion of kids’ apps still leave parents in the dark about the data collected about their children -- so there’s more work to be done.”