There was some big news last week on the children’s privacy front: A District Judge has ruled that Google and the apps they sell on their “store” cannot dodge a lawsuit brought by the New Mexico Attorney General. Previously, a state court had said the case couldn’t proceed, but thanks to this decision, Google will face claims that apps they hosted in the “Designed for Families” section of their Google Play Store, and ad networks they employed, had actual knowledge they were targeting and marketing children’s data, in violation of COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The apps in question are owned by Tiny Lab Productions.
This court case will be significant in highlighting how apps use cookies and advertising tools to track children across the web. As explained in the decision,
“Tiny Lab Productions (“Tiny Lab”), a Lithuanian company, is a developer of child-directed, mobile game apps including Fun Kid Racing, Candy Land Racing, Baby Toilet Race: Cleanup Fun, and GummyBear and Friends Speed Racing. AdMob [AdMob is owned by Google], Twitter/MoPub, InMobi/AerServ, Applovin, and ironSource (collectively, the “Ad Networks”) sold their proprietary software development kits (“SDKs”) to Tiny Lab for installation and use in its gaming apps. Id. ¶ 13. When a Tiny CONTINUE READING: Google Lawsuit, COPPA, Investigating and Blocking Ad Trackers in Children’s Apps | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
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For Data Privacy Day — take our Survey: online apps used by districts and their privacy provisions
In honor of World Data Privacy Day, on January 28, we launched an App Survey for parents, asking what apps your school uses and what privacy protections and transparency notifications are in place. The response has been incredible and we encourage all parents to share and take this survey; of course your answers will remain confidential. Click here to take the survey and if you happen to install ad blockers, let us know what you find!
uBlock and AP Classroom trackers
Blacklight and Google Classroom ad trackers
For Data Privacy Day — take our Survey: online apps used by districts and their privacy provisions