Microsoft Will Pay $20M To Settle U.S Allegations Of Improperly Gathering Children’s Data

Microsoft will pay a $20 million fine to resolve Federal Trade Commission allegations that it improperly acquired and stored the personal information of children who registered to use its Xbox gaming device.

The government claimed that Microsoft improperly stored the data and collected the information without informing or getting permission from the parents. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act was broken by those actions, according to the FTC.

David McCarthy, corporate vice president for Xbox at Microsoft, detailed further measures the business is implementing right now to strengthen its age verification processes and make sure that parents are involved in the creation of kid accounts for the service in a blog post. They primarily relate to initiatives to enhance child education and age verification technology.

McCarthy added that the business has found and resolved a technological error that prevented child accounts from being deleted when the account creation process never ended. Microsoft’s strategy was to only save the information for a maximum of 14 days in order to allow players to continue account creation if they were interrupted.

Before the settlement can take effect, a federal court must approve it, according to the FTC.

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