Eighteen organizations filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission accusing Facebook of violating the Privacy Act. protection of Children's Online Privacy Act (COPPA).
The groups signing the complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allege that Facebook's Messenger Kids app is illegally collecting personal data of children, even when parental consent is not given.
Furthermore, the letter says that Facebook has not added a COPPA-compliant device to request verifiable parental consent before collecting and managing information about users under 13 years.
The Messenger Kids it is a social network designed by Facebook for young children between the ages of 6 and 12 who cannot create their own Facebook accounts or use their parent's social network until they are 13.
Agencies signing the complaint also say that such a mechanism should guarantee that the user who gives consent to the data collection is the parent of the child using the Messenger Kids account, which is allegedly not valid in this point.
"The Messenger Kids app allows anyone with a Facebook account who claims to be an adult to create and verify a Messenger Kids account," says the letter sent by the CCFC (Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood advertisements) to the FTC.
That is, although Messenger Kids requires a parent's Facebook account to creation of a Messenger Kids account and to add contacts, but according to CCFC testing, this is easily bypassed by simply creating a new Facebook account.
Furthermore, the complaint to the FTC states that Facebok Messenger Kids Privacy Policy was designed to be unclear and incomplete and not to follow COPPA's requirements.
