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FP trendOctober 27, 2020 10:49:24 am
Google has removed three Android apps targeting children from its Play store after a report noted that they violated the tech giant’s data collection policies. An investigation was conducted by a nonprofit organization, the International Digital Accountability Council (IDAC) and found that these apps were gaining access to users’ Android Advertising Identification (AAID) and Android ID numbers, thus which is against Google policy.
Google Play Store. Image: tech2
The three apps mentioned, namely Princess Salon, Number Coloring and Cats & Cosplay, had more than 20 million downloads together on the Google Play Store and have now been removed from the store. Google has confirmed the same to a technology portal, Tech Crunch. “Whenever we find an application that violates our policies, we take action,” a company spokesperson told the portal.
The report added that all three apps remain available to download as APK files. Also, these are live on iOS. App store. But IDAC has maintained that they have not encountered similar data collection problems with the apps on iOS. Explaining the threat, IDAC President Quentin Palfrey said that information collected through AIID is combined with an identifier such as Android ID, a user’s privacy remains unprotected despite Google policies.
Apps aimed at children must meet different sets of guidelines. According to Technological pointIn the field of collecting user data, developers of children’s applications must inform Google if their application will collect personally identifiable information. The data includes data collected through application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs).
On the other hand, Facebook is also under investigation by the main data privacy regulator in the European Union, the Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), in Ireland for its handling of children’s data in Instagram. DPC had reportedly received complaints that Instagram had made public the phone numbers and email addresses of users under the age of 18.
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