The FTC Still Cares About Privacy

What should you know about recent FTC enforcement actions announced over the last few days?

In short, privacy enforcement is a “go.”

Here are some takeaways.

• The FTC under Andrew Ferguson will continue to enforce privacy violations under it’s mandate. This will not stop.
• The FTC will continue to enforce COPPA violations, including those involving the collecting, sharing and advertising using data collected from children without parental consent.
• Precise geolocation is sensitive data and you need consent for it. More specifically, you need parental consent when you collect the data as part of a product directed at children.
• To get this consent, you need to specifically say that you are collecting precise geolocation data. You can’t just say “product use information” or “browsing information.”
• If your service or product that is directed at children allows a third party to collect precise geolocation data, you need verifiable consent from parents for this collection and sharing.
• In one of the cases, giving permission for collection of location data was a condition to the use of the product. Since no consent was sought at all, the FTC did not address whether consent can be conditioned on the use of the service.
• In another case, videos that were directed at children were not designated as “made for kids” and parental consent was not sought.
• Of note, the FTC also recently issued its first and substantial ($2 million) enforcement on the INFORM Act, which went into effect in June 2023. The law requires online marketplace to collect, verify and disclose information about high-volume third party sellers and to provide a mechanism for consumers to easily report suspicious activity directly on product listings.

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