Parents need more privacy info about kids' apps, feds say

Is that app you just downloaded surreptitiously gathering data to push targeted ads to your 6-year-old? Quite possibly.

According to a new Federal Trade Commission report, the vast majority of the thousands of mobile apps intended for children offer no privacy information, which makes it hard for parents to make informed decisions about which apps are safe to let their kids use.

In July, FTC staff searched Apple's and Google's app marketplaces for the term "kids" and found nearly 12,000 apps. They then randomly selected 200 kids' apps from each store and examined the information provided in the store about each app. They also visited developers' web pages for the apps.

According to the FTC, in most cases "staff was unable to determine from the promotion pages whether the apps collected any data at all -- let alone the type of data collected, the purpose of the collection, and who collected or obtained access to the data."

Specifically, the promotion pages for Apple apps contained almost no relevant language regarding app data collection or sharing. In the Android market, only three of the app pages examined offered even minimal information beyond the general "permission" statements Google requires. And even those only mentioned that the app provided information to an ad network -- without identifying which information was being collected, by whom, how it was to be used and whether it's shared with other parties.

Click here to continue reading: http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/21/tech/mobile/privacy-info-kids-apps/index.html