Consumer review website Yelp has agreed to settle a $450,000 fine imposed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) due to the collection of the personal information of children.
The fine was the result of a lawsuit filed by the regulator that alleged Yelp of collecting the names and e-mail addresses of children with ages as young as 9 years without consent from their parents.
The FTC accused Yelp that, from the years 2009 to 2013, the company was in violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires companies such as Yelp that collect information of children under 13 years old to follow specific steps to make sure that the information is safe.
Yelp violated the COPPA by not following the specific steps, as the company said that the age-registration feature of its apps failed.
Yelp said that the violation started with a bug in the company's mobile registration process, which inadvertently allowed children under 13 years old to upload reviews.
"Only about 0.02 percent of users who actually completed Yelp's registration process during this time period provided an underage birth date, and we have good reason to believe that many of them were actually adults," Yelp wrote in a blog post.
Yelp had said that the company has addressed the issue and has shut down the affected accounts. Yelp was ordered to safeguard the collected personal information of children and send in a compliance report within a year that will detail how the company will obtain consent from parents if it would be collecting the personal information of minors and how Yelp will avoid collecting information of children.
"As people -- especially children -- move more of their lives onto mobile devices, it's important that they have the same consumer protections when they're using an app that they have when they're on a website," said FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection director Jessica Rich.
"Companies should take steps as they build and test their apps to make sure that children's information won't be collected without a parent's consent."
TinyCo, the creator of the popular apps Tiny Pets, Tiny Zoo and Tiny Monsters, has also agreed to pay a fine imposed by the FTC for similar reasons.
The apps that TinyCo develops are mostly aimed at children, and as such the data that they collect are mostly from children.
The FTC also found the company in violation of the COPPA and have imposed a fine of $300,000.
