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Oath agrees to pay $5M to settle charges it violated children’s privacy

TechCrunch’s Verizon-owned parent, Oath, an ad tech division made from the merging of AOL and Yahoo, has agreed to pay around $5 million to settle charges that it violated a federal children’s privacy law. The penalty is said to be the largest ever issued under COPPA. The New York Times reported the story yesterday, saying the […]

TechCrunch’s Verizon-owned parent, Oath, an ad tech division made from the merging of AOL and Yahoo, has agreed to pay around $5 million to settle charges that it violated a federal children’s privacy law.

The penalty is said to be the largest ever issued under COPPA.

The New York Times reported the story yesterday, saying the settlement will be announced by the New York attorney general’s office today.

At the time of writing the AG’s office could not be reached for comment.

We reached out to Oath with a number of questions about this privacy failure. But a spokesman did not engage with any of them directly — emailing a short statement instead, in which it writes: “We are pleased to see this matter resolved and remain wholly committed to protecting children’s privacy online.”

The spokesman also did not confirm nor dispute the contents of the NYT report.

According to the newspaper, which cites the as-yet unpublished settlement documents, AOL, via its ad exchange, helped place adverts on hundreds of websites that it knew were targeted at children under 13 — such as Roblox.com and Sweetyhigh.com.

The ads were placed used children’s personal data, including cookies and geolocation, which the attorney general’s office said violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998.

The NYT quotes attorney general, Barbara D. Underwood, describing AOL’s actions as “flagrantly” in violation of COPPA.

The $5M fine for Oath comes at a time when scrutiny is being dialled up on online privacy and ad tech generally, and around kids’ data specifically — with rising concern about how children are being tracked and ‘datafied’ online.

Earlier this year, a coalition of child advocacy, consumer and privacy groups in the US filed a complaint with the FTC asking it to investigate Google-owned YouTube over COPPA violations — arguing that while the site’s terms claim it’s aimed at children older than 13 content on YouTube is clearly targeting younger children, including by hosting cartoon videos, nursery rhymes, and toy ads.

COPPA requires that companies provide direct notice to parents and verifiable consent parents before collecting under 13’s information online.

Consent must also be sought for using or disclosing personal data from children. Or indeed for targeting kids with adverts linked to what they do online.

Personal data under COPPA includes persistent identifiers (such as cookies) and geolocation information, as well as data such as real names or screen names.

In the case of Oath, the NYT reports that even though AOL’s policies technically prohibited the use of its display ad exchange to auction ad space on kids’ websites, the company did so anyway —  citing settlement documents covering the ad tech firm’s practices between October 2015 and February 2017.

According to these documents, an account manager for AOL in New York repeatedly — and erroneously — told a client, Playwire Media (which represents children’s websites such as Roblox.com), that AOL’s ad exchange could be used to sell ad space while complying with Coppa.

Playwire then used the exchange to place more than a billion ads on space that should have been covered by Coppa, the newspaper adds.

The paper also reports that AOL (via Advertising.com) also bought ad space on websites flagged as COPPA-covered from other ad exchanges.

It says Oath has since introduced technology to identify when ad space is deemed to be covered by Coppa and ‘adjust its practices’ accordingly — again citing the settlement documents.

As part of the settlement the ad tech division of Verizon has agreed to create a COPPA compliance program, to be overseen by a dedicated executive or officer; and to provide annual training on COPPA compliance to account managers and other employees who work with ads on kids’ websites.

Oath also agreed to destroy personal information it has collected from children.

It’s not clear whether the censured practices ended in February 2017 or continued until more recently. We asked Oath for clarification but it did not respond to the question.

It’s also not clear whether AOL was also tracking and targeting adverts at children in the EU. If Oath was doing so but stopped before May 25 this year it should avoid the possibility of any penalty under Europe’s tough new privacy framework, GDPR, which came into force in May this year — beefing up protection around children’s data by setting a cap of between 16- and 13-years-old for children being able to consent to their own data being processed.

GDPR also steeply hikes penalties for privacy violations (up to a maximum of 4% of global annual turnover).

Prior to the regulation a European data protection directive was in force across the bloc but it’s GDPR that has strengthened protections in this area with the new provision on children’s data.

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