Major social media and video companies are collecting data on their customers and selling it without adequately protecting users’ privacy, the Federal Trade Commission said in a report on Thursday.
Children and teenagers were especially vulnerable to such practices, according to the FTC.
“The failure of several companies to adequately protect children and youth online is particularly troubling,” Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina M. Khan said in a statement. “Although they are costly for companies, these surveillance methods can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedom and expose them to many risks, from theft to stalking .”
About four years ago, the FTC ordered nine companies to provide information on how they collect, use and disclose personal information, as well as how they advertise and interact with their users, especially young people and children. The FTC report relies on responses from Amazon (the owner of the Twitch gaming platform); Meta (formerly known as Facebook), YouTube, Twitter, Snap, ByteDance (owner of TikTok), Discord, Reddit and WhatsApp.
The report argues that companies not only collect data about their users, even non-users, but can keep them forever. It also said that many companies “engage in massive data sharing” and that some of them did not delete user data even when requested.
It found users and non-users of the platform have few, if any, options to opt out of how their data is used.
“The FTC’s reporting plan and focus on consumers is an important step. However, the report puts too many different types in the same bucket and paints a broad brush, which can confuse consumers and portray other platforms, such as Discord, in an inaccurate manner, “Head of US/Canada Public Policy Secretary Kate Sheerin told Spectrum News.
He said, Discord is “a real-time chat platform with strong user privacy controls and no provision for endless browsing. At the time of the study, Discord did not run any advertising services of digital, which is the main pillar of the report.”
According to the FTC, many companies monetized data collection through targeted advertising; some of them have used tracking technology to market to their users.
The FTC argues that many companies in its report treated young users in the same way as adults, allowing them on the platform without restrictions. Some companies have told the agency that they don’t have children on their platforms because they don’t target their services to them or allow children to create accounts.
The agency is asking Congress to pass federal privacy laws to address the protection gaps provided by the Children’s Privacy Protection Act.
It also encourages companies to limit data collection and create policies that can be used to limit data retention. It also advises them to set limits on the data they share with third parties, delete data they no longer need and give more control to users.
Spectrum News has also reached out to Amazon and Snap for comment.
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