It's bad enough that kids are addicted to their smartphones these days. But to think that apps they interact with could be collecting sensitive information without any parental consent?
This is actually happening, and your kids may actually be at risk, if they're spending time on Android phones.
A team of researchers from around the world have uncovered evidence of kid-friendly Android apps improperly tracking children's activities through their smartphones.
The researchers used an automated testing process to discover that 3,337 family-and child-oriented Android apps on Google Play Store were improperly collecting kids' data, potentially putting them in violation of a US law which limits data collection of kids under 13 years of age, according to Engadget.
Reuters
More than a 1000 apps shared identity info with third parties, while a further 2,300 were in violation of Google terms of service by sharing kids' info with advertisers.?
Even though Facebook has a mechanism of limiting data of under-13 users with advertisers and third-party, almost 92 percent of these Android apps didn't flag their user data belonging to minors and under-aged kids -- which should raise huge concerns among data privacy and sharing watchdogs.
This study has uncovered a reality that many parents don't truly know -- how Android apps their kids might be spending time with is actually exposing their data to third party and even advertisers, without any adult supervision.
What if someone designs a children's app with the sole purpose of spying on them, without their or their parent's knowledge? What if such data collection practices had negative real-world consequences for the kids -- where they're stalked, harassed or brought into unimaginable harm.