If your children use smartphones, please remove these three dating apps
According to cybersecurity specialists, Apple and Google have banned three dating apps off their official platforms after U.S. authorities published a report stating that these services could expose minors to sexual predators.
In the report, the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) mentions that the dating apps FastMeet, Meet 24
and Meet4U, violated some provisions of the Children Online Privacy Protection
Act (COPPA). This law prohibits websites and mobile applications from
collecting information from children under the age of 13 without parental
consent.
According to the FTC, these three applications,
owned by the Ukrainian company Wildec LLC, allowed users to contact children 13
years of age or younger, infringing on the privacy policy of dating services
and some laws such as COPPA.
According to experts in cybersecurity, when
analyzing these apps, profiles of 12-year-old users were found; the FTC claims
that the company collected a large amount of data from minor users, including
birth dates and location data, which could leave children at risk.
The FTC informed the company of alleged
attempts by some users to contact minors through the three apps; the government
agency claims that Wildec was aware that children thirteen years of age or
younger used some of these apps.
Applications have already been removed from Google
Play Store and App Store; to this date, no representative or official of Wildec
has made any statement. In addition, the FTC demanded that the company
immediately remove from its records any information belonging to minors; Wildec
also received recommendations to update its policy of data collection and
consent of parents or guardians.
According to cybersecurity experts from the
International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS), any adult, regardless of
their intentions, could search by age and location to locate the nearest
children, so it was necessary for the authorities and official downloading apps
platforms to intervene.
Recently, countries like the United Kingdom
have implemented more aggressive measures against child exploitation attempts
over the Internet, proposing penalties even for executives of technology
companies not complying with child protection laws.
Gloss