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New York Fines Viacom, Mattel and Hasbro For Tracking Kids Online (usatoday.com) 49

An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Companies that operate popular kids websites like nickjr.com and barbie.com agreed to a $835,000 settlement and to change their practices after an investigation found the sites were enabled with technology that tracked kids' internet activities. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced his office reached settlements with Viacom, Mattel, Hasbro and JumpStart Games after an investigation into the companies found violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The investigation, called "Operation Child Tracker," found that websites operated by the companies enabled third-party vendors, such as marketing and advertising companies, to track children's online activity -- which violated federal law. Federal law prohibits the unauthorized collection of children's personal information on websites aimed at children under age 13. Viacom will pay $500,000; Mattel will pay $250,000; and JumpStart will pay $85,000. [Hasbro will not pay a penalty because it is part of a "safe harbor program" through the Federal Trade Commission that already requires more disclosures of web activity, Schneiderman said.]
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New York Fines Viacom, Mattel and Hasbro For Tracking Kids Online

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    So setting my birth date to something like 2010 is all I need to do to keep those web and app trackers off my back? awesome!

    • So setting my birth date to something like 2010 is all I need to do to keep those web and app trackers off my back?

      Correct. The tradeoff is that most websites won't let you create an account or use their site.

  • by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @06:49PM (#52882627)

    It is called stalking. Just because you do it via the internet doesn't mean jack.

  • Clearly these companies haven't been paying attention. They could have just blamed the Russians and all would be fine.

  • TPP is Evil and wants to track your kids and do unspeakable things to them.

    Here endeth the lesson.

  • when the same discussion was had over advertising to kids on TV laws to curtail it got shut down hard. I guess everything is scarier if you add "The Internet" to it.
  • Hasbro getting that get out of jail free card lol. Yey for them more ponies for me.
  • What if kids use an Android phone and now you *can't* turn off tracking? Can Google be sued? Google is passing location info to apps, so that is "online." And I would say this is partly offline tracking as well, and much more sinister than simply tracking kids in order to serve them adds. This is your child's physical location.

  • by z0idberg ( 888892 ) on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @10:47PM (#52883589)

    Viacomm 2015 gross earnings $6.18 billion.
    $500,000 fine.

    Mattel 2015 gross earnings $2.8 billion.
    $250,000 fine.

    For an individual earning $100,000 gross income that equates to roughly to $8 and $9 fines respectively*. That will really teach them to think twice about breaking federal law by enabling tracking of children through their sites. What a joke.

    * that's assuming the individual is taxed at the same rate as the corporations. Which they aren't. So the relative amount is even lower.

    • by PingSpike ( 947548 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @09:27AM (#52885569)

      Awhile back Hasbro or Mattel got into hot water, well, slightly warm water for shipping lead painted toys to kids. The end result was that regulations were passed where toy makers had to have independent labs test for lead. This is an onerous cost to small toy makers and a lot of hobby sellers, etc complained about it to no avail. Mattel and the other big toy makers, who were the cause of the laws creation were made exempt from this, the reason being was that they were large enough to have their own in house labs to test. Even though they already proved they don't.

  • What's the difference between tracking kids and tracking adults? When did tracking become a legal equal to fucking?

  • Why should somebody over 18 be tracked? I send a Do-Not-Track Bit and want the companies to respect it.

  • by jordan314 ( 1052648 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2016 @01:04PM (#52887301)
    I'm not arguing against the spirit of these laws, but it's easy to break them without being nefarious. Including google analytics on a site, common practice in the web industry, with the track demographic data checkbox checked is enough to break these laws.

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