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 youngsters with out their dad and mom’ consent, the FTC mentioned on Monday.

The firm had been charged with violating the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by accumulating private data from youngsters who signed as much as its Xbox gaming system with out notifying their dad and mom or acquiring their dad and mom’ consent, and by retaining youngsters’s private data, the FTC mentioned in a press release.

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 youngster customers of its Xbox system. It will prolong COPPA protections to third-party gaming publishers with whom Microsoft shares youngsters’s information, the FTC mentioned.

“Our proposed order makes it simpler for folks to guard their youngsters’s privateness on Xbox, and limits what data Microsoft can gather and retain about children,” mentioned 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 youngsters beneath 13 to inform dad and mom in regards to the private data they gather and to acquire verifiable parental consent earlier than accumulating and utilizing any private data collected from youngsters.

From 2015 to 2020, Microsoft retained the information that it collected from youngsters in the course of the account creation course of, even when a mother or father failed to finish the method, in accordance with the criticism.

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