Toy Maker Vtech Settles Privacy charges for Violating Child Privacy Law

The most famous electronic toy maker VTech Electronics was charged to pay $650,000 for illegally collecting kids’ information and that it had collected digital data on children without parents permission and failed to keep that information secure from hackers, the Federal Trade Commission said Monday.

COPPA says ” companies collecting personal information from children under 13 should disclosing to parents the information it collects.Companies also must take reasonable measures to protect the confidentiality, security, and integrity of the personal information they collect about children.

Vtech Electronics collected personal information from parents on its Learning Lodge Navigator online platform, where the kid connect app was available for download.

Parents should register and submit personal information their name, email address as well as their children’s name, date of birth and gender.It collects including text messages, photos, and audio messages when they used the kid connect app.

Also Read Privacy Policy – Sensitive Information that Collected by Websites and Mobile Applications

As of November 2015, about 2.25 million parents had registered and created accounts with Learning Lodge for nearly 3 million children.

This included about 638,000 Kid Connect accounts for children. In addition, about 134,000 parents in the United States created Planet VTech accounts for 130,000 children by November 2015.

VTech violated the FTC Act by falsely stating in its privacy policy that most personal information submitted by users through the Learning Lodge and Planet VTech would be encrypted.

The complaint did not take reasonable steps to protect the information it collected through Kid Connect, such as implementing safeguards and security measures to protect transmitted and stored information and implementing an intrusion prevention or detection system to alert the company of an unauthorized intrusion of its network.