A disgruntled mom has filed a lawsuit against Disney and three of the company's software developers for her collection personal information from her child through mobile games.
The lawsuit, filed this week in a California court, alleges that Disney never sought parental approval for the data collection by children playing the company's games.
Data collection is done through advertising SDK (software development kit) embedded in the company's smartphone and tablet games.
The lawsuit lists Disney as accused and three software companies that used Disney SDKs in their games. The three companies are Upsight, Inc., Unity Technologies SF., And Kochava Inc.
The lawsuit claims that over 40 company games for Android and iOS collect child information through SDKs and transmit data to Disney servers.
The plaintiffs fear that the famous company is using this data collection practice to create profiles for their children.
The 1998 Child Privacy Act (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act or COPPA) is a federal law of the United States prohibiting the collection of personal data by children under the age of 13.
This is not the first time that Disney is violating COPPA. 2011, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has imposed fines of several billion dollars (3 million dollars) on Disney, as its subsidiary Playdom, Inc. collected data from children without parental approval.
The applicant, Amanda Rushing and LL's child, in addition to asking the judge to take immediate steps to stop the proceedings, seek damages, trial costs and the lawyer's fees.
Below are the games included in the treatment.