Tech companies fined USD 100,000 for violating child privacy online

The Washington State Attorney General AG Ferguson has announced that technology company Super Basic LLC and its parent organisation Maple Media LLC would have to pay $100,000 for violating the privacy of children online on their social media platform “We Heart It” that has approximately 500,000 monthly active users in the United States.

Investigation conducted by the Attorney General’s Office found We Heart It, had allowed children below 13 years to create accounts, their user profiles were public by default and could be searched and viewed by any other WeHeart IT user, collected their personal information  and meta data  without parental consent and allowed third-party advertisers to collect data from them.