Microsoft to Pay USD 20 Million to Settle US Charges for Violating Children’s Privacy

Microsoft can pay $20 million to settle U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) prices that the tech firm illegally collected private data from kids with out their dad and mom’ consent, the FTC stated on Monday.

The firm had been charged with violating the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by accumulating private data from kids who signed up to its Xbox gaming system with out notifying their dad and mom or acquiring their dad and mom’ consent, and by retaining kids’s private data, the FTC stated in an announcement.

The firm didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark late on Monday.

The order requires Microsoft to take steps to enhance privateness protections for little one customers of its Xbox system. It will prolong COPPA protections to third-party gaming publishers with whom Microsoft shares kids’s information, the FTC stated.

“Our proposed order makes it simpler for dad and mom to defend their kids’s privateness on Xbox, and limits what data Microsoft can acquire and retain about youngsters,” stated Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.

“This action should also make it abundantly clear that kids’ avatars, biometric data, and health information are not exempt from COPPA,” Levine added.

The regulation requires on-line companies and web sites directed to kids beneath 13 to notify dad and mom in regards to the private data they acquire and to get hold of verifiable parental consent earlier than accumulating and utilizing any private data collected from kids.

From 2015 to 2020, Microsoft retained the information that it collected from kids throughout the account creation course of, even when a guardian failed to full the method, in accordance to the criticism.

(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is revealed from a syndicated information company feed – Reuters)