NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY: Walt Disney Accused of Illegally Tracking Children Via Apps in New Lawsuit • Now The End Begins

NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY: Walt Disney Accused of Illegally Tracking Children Via Apps in New Lawsuit

The suit claims Disney is violating the Children's Online Privacy
Protection Act. According to the suit, a Disney subsidiary, Playdom
Inc., paid the largest civil penalty to date ($3 million) for violating
COPPA in 2011. Rushing says L.L. was tracked while using the princess
pets app, but the suit claims dozens of other games also track their
users, including Club Penguin Island, Star Wars: Puzzle Droids, Frozen
Free Fall and Disney Emoji Blitz.

by Geoffrey Grider August 4, 2017

The
suit claims Disney is violating the Children’s Online Privacy
Protection Act. A San Francisco mom says her child was illegally tracked
while using the Disney Princess Palace Pets app.

EDITOR’S NOTE:
Gone are the days when the Mouse was innocent, the 2017 version of
Mickey is a bad boy. He makes theme park guests wear RFID tracking
bracelets, he makes movies that indoctrinate children to the LGBT
agenda, and now he is tracking innocent little kids as they have fun
playing with Disney mobile apps. Welcome to the end times, where even
Mickey and Minnie have gone rogue.

Amanda Rushing, on behalf of her child referred to as “L.L.,” is suing The Walt Disney Company,
Disney Electronic Content and others in a proposed class action filed
Thursday in California federal court.Rushing claims an
advertising-specific software development kit is surreptitiously
embedded in the code for the app, and that’s how Disney is collecting
personal information and tracking online behavior.

“App
developers and their SDK-providing partners can track children’s
behavior while they play online games with their mobile devices by
obtaining critical pieces of data from the mobile devices, including
‘persistent identifiers,’ typically a unique number linked to a specific
mobile device,” writes attorney Michael Sobol in the complaint. “These
persistent identifiers allow SDK providers to detect a child’s activity
across multiple apps and platforms on the internet, and across different
devices, effectively providing a full chronology of the child’s actions
across devices and apps. This information is then sold to various
third-parties who sell targeted online advertising.”

Disney makes it fun to have your every move and purchase chipped, tracked and recorded:

Sobol argues this is exactly the kind of practice the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act
was enacted to prevent. Under COPPA, app developers and any
third-parties working with them can’t legally collect personal
information about children who are under the age of 13 without
verifiable consent from their parents.

“Disney has failed to
safeguard children’s personal information and ensure that third-parties’
collection of data from children is lawful,” writes Sobol.

According
to the suit, a Disney subsidiary, Playdom Inc., paid the largest civil
penalty to date ($3 million) for violating COPPA in 2011.

Rushing says L.L. was tracked while using the princess pets app,
but the suit claims dozens of other games also track their users,
including Club Penguin Island, Star Wars: Puzzle Droids, Frozen Free
Fall and Disney Emoji Blitz. (Read the full list on pages 9 and 10 of
the complaint, which is posted here.)

Guests
who have been chosen to participate in a trial test of FastPass+
receive this package in the mail. It includes information about the
system and RFID-encoded cards.

Rushing is seeking class certification with a class defined as:
“all persons residing in the States of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona,
Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii,
Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland,
Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New
Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia who
are younger than the age of 13, or were younger than the age of 13 when
they played the Game Tracking Apps, and their parents and/or legal
guardians, from whom Defendants collected, used, or disclosed personal
information without verifiable parental consent.”

She’s also
seeking certification of a sub-class of California residents who could
also have claims for violation of the state’s right to privacy.

Disney has not yet replied to a request for comment on the complaint. source





NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY: Walt Disney Accused of Illegally Tracking Children Via Apps in New Lawsuit • Now The End Begins