67% of children apps and websites collect data on kids

Sep 3, 2015 15:26 GMT  ·  By

The Global Privacy Enforcement Network (GPEN) investigated the practices of over 1,500 apps and websites, and found out privacy is as shaky a ground in children-targeted Web products as it is for regular, grown-up users.

According to their findings, 67% of children apps and websites collected personal information from kids using the service in question. Half of these shared the information they gathered with third-party services.

Out of all apps and websites for kids, only 31% had any kind of prevention measures or controls to limit the collection of personal information from children.

But this is where the good news ends. 22% of all apps/websites asked children for their phone numbers while 23% asked them for their photos or a video.

Even worse, 58% of these apps/sites were actively redirecting children to other services, without taking into account that the pages they were redirecting children to, may not be safe to view for their age groups.

In case children or their parents wanted profiles deleted, only 29% of the surveyed websites would allow for their account and personal data to be removed from the service.

Out of all websites, under a quarter actively encouraged the involvement of a parent when the child was using the site or application.

The UK is preparing letters and "enforcement action"

"These are concerning results. The attitude shown by a number of these websites and apps suggested little regard for how anyone’s personal information should be handled, let alone that of children," said Adam Stevens, head of Intelligence Hub in the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). "We’ll now be writing out to the sites and apps that caused us concern, making clear the changes we expect them to make. We wouldn’t rule out enforcement action in this area if required."

If we’ve learned something by now about how our politically-correct society works, it is that nothing gets fixed faster than issues affecting kids.

Apps and websites have been collecting data on Internet users for years, but nothing has been done about it until now, even after huge data breaches leaked the personal details of millions of people online.

A few kids’ websites collected data on children, and the ICO Intelligence Hub Head is ready to send out letters to infringing webmasters. How about that?