Google fined $170 million for violating child privacy, YouTube changes its child data policy

Following the $5 billion penalty on Facebook for privacy violations earlier this year, the United States Federal Trade Commission hit Google with a record $170 million penalty for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). While the incident has been unprecedented, several dissenters claim that the penalty tantamounts to Google’s revenue generation in 11 hours, and is practically a slap on the wrist for cybercrimes as this.

YouTube is a very popular platform among kids for its wide variety of content; which, incidentally, becomes the crux of the problem, since there is no filter on the personalised ads, cookies, comments, surveys and notifications that allegedly gather children’s personal information.

This is the first time the FTC went after a platform rather than a content creator in its battle for child privacy protection. However, experts say that this move is likely to make the content creators suffer more than YouTube itself.

YouTube responded to the FTC charges by outlining several privacy changes it will make on its video search platform by the end of this year. Click here to know more about the changes.

Data privacy has become very important with the increase of cybercrimes, and it is heartening to see that global organisations are making effort to minimise these via strict policies on these content platforms.

Video source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ftc-fines-google-170-million-for-violating-childrens-privacy-on-youtube/

Image source: Google images.