Apps are spying on our kids at a scale that should shock you. More than two-thirds of the 1,000 most popular iPhone apps likely to be used by children collect and send their personal information out to the advertising industry, according to a major
new study shared with me by fraud and compliance software company
Pixalate. On Android, 79 percent of popular kids apps do the same.
Angry Birds 2 snoops when kids use it. So do Candy Crush Saga and apps for coloring and doing math homework. They’re grabbing kids’ general locations and other identifying information and sending it to companies that can track their interests, predict what they might want to buy or even sell their information to others.
Apple and Google run the app stores, so what are they doing about it? Enabling it.
Tech companies need to stop turning a blind eye when children use their products — or else we need laws to impose some responsibility on them. We the users want children’s privacy to be protected online. But parents and teachers can’t be the only line of defense.
Children’s privacy deserves special attention because kids’ data can be misused in some uniquely harmful ways.
Research suggests many children can’t distinguish ads from content, and tracking tech lets marketers micro-target young minds.
