Microsoft to pay $20 million to settle Xbox Live privacy allegations
Source: CNN Business
Washington CNN — Microsoft will pay $20 million to settle US government allegations that the tech giant violated children’s privacy by illegally collecting their personal information through its Xbox Live gaming service. According to the Federal Trade Commission, Microsoft broke the law by failing to tell parents about the full breadth of information it gathered from kids under the age of 13.
That information, the FTC said in a lawsuit filed Monday, included the fact that children may share images of themselves in their account profiles, as well as video and audio recordings of themselves, their real names and logs of their activity on the platform. Microsoft also allegedly kept for years the personal information of millions of people, including children, who started creating accounts with Xbox Live but who never completed the sign-up process.
“Even when a user indicated that they were under 13, they were also asked, until late 2021, to provide additional personal information including a phone number and to agree to Microsoft’s service agreement and advertising policy, which until 2019 included a pre-checked box allowing Microsoft to send promotional messages and to share user data with advertisers,” the FTC said in a release.
In a statement, Microsoft said: “We recently entered into a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to update our account creation process and resolve a data retention glitch found in our system. We are committed to complying with the order.”
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/06/tech/microsoft-xbox-live-settlement/index.html
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