FTC Report Offers Wake-Up Call on Privacy Disclosures, Enforcement Concerning Kids’ Apps
An FTC report Thursday targets mobile applications stores and app developers for their inadequate disclosure of information parents need to determine what data is being collected from their children when they download and use apps, how it’s shared or who will have access to it. The report highlights “the lack of information available to parents prior to downloading mobile apps for their children, and calls on the industry to provide greater transparency about their data practices,” the FTC said. FTC staff also found that there isn’t enough information provided from apps available through stores from Apple and Google’s Android concerning apps that are integrated with social media and targeted advertising, the FTC said.
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According to the report, the FTC’s biggest concern was data collection and sharing. While staff encountered a diverse pool of apps for kids, staff hardly ever found “information in the app marketplaces about the data collection and sharing practices of these applications.” There was “almost no relevant language regarding app data collection or sharing on the Apple app promotion pages, and minimal information … on just three of the Android promotion pages,” the report said. In most instances, staff couldn’t determine from the information on the app store page or the developer’s landing page whether an app collected any data. “This is troubling given the ability of mobile apps to access users’ information on devices automatically and to transmit this information invisibly to a wide variety of entities."
The report also called attention to a lack of enforcement by the app stores to ensure developers provide their data collection practices for parents: “This lack of enforcement provides little incentive to app developers to provide such disclosures and leaves parents without the information they need."
Regarding in-app advertising, the presence of some statements to parents and other users suggest that certain developers are aware of parents’ concerns, but “parents need clear, easy-to-read and consistent disclosures regarding the advertising that their children may view on apps, especially when that advertising is personalized based on the child’s in-app activities,” the report said.
The commission urged app stores to do more, like simplify disclosures, to properly inform parents. Developers should provide information “through simple and short disclosures or icons that are easy to find and understand on the small screen of a mobile device.” They also should alert parents if an app connects with any social media “or allows targeted advertising to occur through the app,” the report said.
In July 2011, FTC staff searched the desktop version of Apple’s app store and the browser-based version of the Android Market for the term “kids,” the report said. More than 8,000 apps were available through Apple and more than 3,600 in the Android Market. The majority of apps had educational, gaming or animal themes, the FTC said.
The FTC’s recommendations didn’t sate lawmakers’ appetites to pass their own privacy bills. They are simply “common sense” ways for app developers, stores and mobile device makers to improve disclosure policies and practices, said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., co-chair of the Congressional Privacy Caucus and former Communications Subcommittee chairman. The report “rightfully identifies the lack of information available to parents prior to downloading” mobile apps, he said. Markey said the Commerce Committee should “move forward” on his Do Not Track Kids Act introduced last year with his caucus co-chair, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas (WID Dec 15 p3). That bill would update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, enacted in 1998.
Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said it was “plain common sense that, at the very minimum, parents should have the right to know what kind of information an app directed to their children collects, uses and shares before downloading it.” The privacy pitfalls of the app marketplace show the need for “a baseline code of behavior” such as that embodied in his Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights introduced with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Kerry said. He said the FTC’s “long overdue” final privacy report (WID Nov 9 p3) should be handed over “in the near future."
The FTC report “should be a wake-up call for developers and platforms alike,” said Jules Polonetsky, co-chair of the Future of Privacy Forum and former AOL chief privacy officer. “Accessing user data is a privilege, not a right, and if companies don’t make user trust their first priority they may find that users or platforms will make useful data unavailable.”