Microsoft To Pay $20 Million Over Child Privacy Violation
American tech major Microsoft will pay a USD 20 million fine to US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the illegal collection and preservation of children’s data who signed up to use its Xbox video game console, according to a media report on Tuesday.
The multinational corporation is also charged for gathering the data without notifying the kids’ (users) parents or obtaining their consent and illegally holding onto the data.
According to the FTC, Microsoft’s actions violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
Underlining the matter, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Xbox Dave McCarthy took over the blog post to notify that the company is in the process to introduce additional steps to improve its age verification systems ensuring parents’ involvement in the creation of child accounts for the Xbox service.
It is an effort to improve the age verification process and to keep children and parents informed about privacy issues, McCarthy added.
Furthermore, McCarthy underlined the company had identified and fixed a technical glitch that failed to delete child accounts in cases wherein an account creation remained unfinished.
He said it was the policy of Microsoft to hold that data for 14 days allowing players to pick up account creation where they left off in case of interruption.
Meanwhile, FTC said the settlement needs to be approved by a federal court before going into effect.
