Microsoft will pay a fine of $20 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges. It illegally collected and retained the data of children who signed up to use its Xbox video game console.
The agency charged that Microsoft gathered the data without notifying parents or obtaining their consent. And that it also illegally held onto the data
Those actions violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the FTC stated.
In a blog post, Microsoft corporate vice president for Xbox Dave McCarthy outlined additional steps the company now taking to improve its age verification systems and to ensure that parents involved in the creation of child accounts for the service
These mostly concern efforts to improve age verification technology. Thus, to educate children and parents about privacy issues.
McCarthy also said the company had identified and fixed a technical glitch that failed to delete child accounts in cases. The account creation process never finished. Microsoft policy to hold that data no longer than 14 days in order to allow players to pick up account creation where they left off if they interrupted.
The settlement must approved by a federal court before it can go into effect, the FTC said.