Apps – FTC Guardian

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Pledges to Investigate Video Game Loot Boxes

Allyn Cutts — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 10:46:07 +0000

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Pledges to Investigate Video Game Loot Boxes

FTC chairman Joseph Simons on Tuesday said he would investigate video game loot boxes to ensure that children are being protected and parents are educated on the matter.

The request comes about nine months after Hassan sent a letter to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board asking for the group to review the rating process as it relates to loot boxes, examine the marketing of loot boxes to children, and put together best practices for developers around the toxic form of microtransactions. The senator also asked the board to conduct a study that further delves into the reach and impact of loot boxes in games. At the time, she said if they didn’t take sufficient action she would ask the FTC to get involved.

“Loot boxes are now endemic in the video game industry and are present in everything from casual smartphone games to the newest, high-budget video game releases. Loot boxes will represent a $50 billion industry by the year 2022, according to the latest research estimates. Children may be particularly susceptible to engaging with these in-game purchases, which are often considered integral components of video games. Just this month Great Britain’s gambling commission released a report finding that 30% of children have used loot boxes in video games. The report further found that this exposure may correlate with a rise of young problem gamblers in the United Kingdom. Belgium, Netherlands, and Japan have moved to regulate the use of loot boxes in video games given this close link to gambling.

Read the full article here.

Here’s How To Make Sure You, Your Business and Website Are FTC & GDPR Compliant

By now it should be clear how important it is for you to be FTC compliant. But how can you do that without spending $7,500-$8,000 or more on Internet Attorneys?

Smart business owners around the world are doing it with the help of FTC Guardian.

FTC Guardian is a service that is 100% focused on helping to keep you get and stay FTC & GDPR compliant and fully protected. And right now, we are offering a free training to give you the knowledge, information, and guidance that you need to stay out of trouble with the Federal Trade Commission and the new GDPR guidelines.

Free Compliance Workshop: Join Chip Cooper, Esq., the #1 FTC Compliance & GDPR trainer in the World, for a one-of-kind, completely free online compliance workshop.

Workshops fill up quickly, so register now.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover on the training:

Real-Life Examples of People Who Didn’t Think They Were At Risk, But Who Got Nailed By The FTC, And Why It Could Happen To You, Too

The 3 Enormous Powers The FTC Has That Can Change Your Life – And Your Family’s Life – Forever!

How to Avoid FTC Claims When Collecting Leads With Optin Forms

3 Privacy Policy Mistakes Every Digital Marketer Is Making, And Why You’re In The FTC Crosshairs.

And Much More…

Remember: legal protection is a massively important part of your business, and it’s one you cannot afford to ignore any longer.

Go here to register for our next FREE training and make your business is FTC compliant today!

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It’s not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Neither the author nor FTC Guardian, Inc. is endorsed by the Federal Trade Commission.

All the Ways Your Smartphone and Its Apps Can Track You

Allyn Cutts — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 01:49:38 +0000

All the Ways Your Smartphone and Its Apps Can Track You

By David Nield

The little pocket supercomputers we all constantly carry around with us aren’t just supplying us with useful information, they’re also collecting a host of data on us and our habits, all of the time. Here’s a guide to what gets collected by your smartphone and the apps running on it, and how you can take back some control.

Sensors, Android, and iOS

Your smartphone is packed with sensors, monitoring where you are in the world, how fast you’re moving through space, which way up you’re holding your phone, and more. All of this data is used by apps to improve the user experience—so making sure your phone apps switch between landscape and portrait modes, and keeping you on the right route for your commute—but how much of this data is logged and stored is largely up to the choices of the handset manufacturer.

Smartphone apps

On top of the basic information collected by your smartphone and beamed back (or not beamed back) to the company that made your handset, there’s all the information collected by the apps you run too—the data that gets recorded and saved is down to an individual app’s privacy policies and the permissions you give it.

Read full article and learn more about Data and Privacy Policy here.

Here’s How To Make Sure You, Your Business & Website Is FTC Compliant

By now it should be clear how important it is for you to be FTC compliant. But how can you do that without spending $7,500-$8,000 or more on Internet Attorneys?

Smart business owners around the world are doing it with the help of FTC Guardian.

FTC Guardian is a service that is 100% focused on helping to keep you get and stay FTC compliant and fully protected. And right now, we are offering a free training to give you the knowledge, information, and guidance that you need to stay out of trouble with the Federal Trade Commission.

Free Compliance Workshop: Join Chip Cooper, Esq., the #1 FTC Compliance trainer in the World, for a one-of-kind, completely free online compliance workshop. Workshops fill up quickly, so register now.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover on the training:

Real-Life Examples of People Who Didn’t Think They Were At Risk, But Who Got Nailed By The FTC, And Why It Could Happen To You, Too

The 3 Enormous Powers The FTC Has That Can Change Your Life – And Your Family’s Life – Forever!

How to Avoid FTC Claims When Collecting Leads With Optin Forms

3 Privacy Policy Mistakes Every Digital Marketer Is Making, And Why You’re In The FTC Crosshairs.

And Much More…

Remember: legal protection is a massively important part of your business, and it’s one you cannot afford to ignore any longer.

Go here to register for our next FREE training and make your business is FTC compliant today!

Popular Apps and Websites That Sell Your Anonymized Data

Allyn Cutts — Mon, 29 May 2017 11:47:52 +0000

Popular apps and websites reserve the right to sell your anonymized data

By Nick Vega

Last month, most people learned through a New York Times story that the email decluttering service Unroll.me had been selling anonymized customer data to third parties.

Specifically, Unroll.me had reportedly analyzed Lyft receipt data from users' email inboxes, then sold that data to Uber. Unroll.me would not confirm the specific transactions with Business Insider, but did say it routinely sells data in this way to third parties, which is how the site makes money.

Unroll.Me's pointed to the company's plain-English privacy policy to show that there was no effort to conceal what the company was doing, but customers were nonetheless upset. Many felt that their trust had been betrayed, and that they had been misled.

In the wake of this story, we decided to go through the privacy policies of several popular applications and websites to see what they do with users' anonymized data. To be clear, inclusion on this list does not mean that a company is actively selling users' anonymized, non-identifiable data; several companies responded to our inquiries to clarify that they do not do this. However, we asked an attorney to look over these privacy policies, and he was able to confirm that the language keeps the options for these companies to sell your data at a later date.

Tinder

Because it's tied to your Facebook profile, Tinder can gain a lot of information about you through your account. Be sure to check your Facebook settings to limit what information you share with the dating app.

What they say:

We also may share aggregated, non-personal information, or personal information in hashed, non-human readable form, with third parties, including advisors, advertisers and investors, for the purpose of conducting general business analysis, advertising, marketing, or other business purposes.

Spotify

What the privacy policy says:

We may share information with advertising partners in order to send you promotional communications about Spotify or to show you more tailored content, including relevant advertising for products and services that may be of interest to you, and to understand how users interact with advertisements. The information we share is in a de-identified format (for example, through the use of hashing) that does not personally identify you.

Spotify's statement to Business Insider:

The customer data we share with trusted partners simply helps us to tailor improved experiences to our users, allows us to deliver relevant content and ads to users on the free service, and to build new and innovative products for the future.

Spotify does not sell customer data, and the privacy and security of our customers' data remains our highest priority.

Lyft

What the privacy policy says:

We may share your information with third parties… to provide information about the use of the Lyft Platform to potential business partners in aggregated or de-identified form that can’t reasonably be used to identify you.

Lyft's statement to Business Insider:

We don't sell [user] data currently and have no immediate plans to do so.

Read full story and learn more about Data Privacy and Collection here.

Here’s How To Make Sure You, Your Business & Website Is FTC Compliant

By now it should be clear how important it is for you to be FTC compliant. But how can you do that without spending $7,500-$8,000 or more on Internet Attorneys?

Smart business owners around the world are doing it with the help ofFTC Guardian.

The training is titled: 3 Tragic (Legal) Privacy Policy List Building Mistakes That Can Get You In Hot Water With The FTC Today – Resulting In Your Business Being Shut Down… And How To Solve It!

Here are some of the things you’ll discover on the training:

Real-Life Examples of People Who Didn’t Think They Were At Risk, But Who Got Nailed By The FTC, And Why It Could Happen To You, Too

The 3 Enormous Powers The FTC Has That Can Change Your Life – And Your Family’s Life – Forever!

How to Avoid FTC Claims When Collecting Leads With Optin Forms

3 Privacy Policy Mistakes Every Digital Marketer Is Making, And Why You’re In The FTC Crosshairs.

And Much More…

Remember: legal protection is a massively important part of your business, and it’s one you cannot afford to ignore any longer.

Go here to register for our next FREE training and make your business is FTC compliant today!

Twitter Updates Privacy Policy

Allyn Cutts — Sun, 21 May 2017 20:03:31 +0000

Twitter Updates Privacy Policy

By Angela Moscaritolo

Twitter has announced some privacy policy updates and new tools to give users more control over how their information is used.

It should now be a little easier to keep tabs on how Twitter is using your information and which advertisers target you on the platform. In Settings, visit the newly expanded “Your Twitter Data” section (located on the right-side column on desktop) to see which advertisers have included you in their “Tailored Audiences.”

You can request an advertiser list and/or head to a new “Personalized and Data” section, which lets you easily opt out of things like personalized ads and data tracking. Among the options in this section is one to “personalize across your devices.” If you leave this turned on, Twitter will associate your device with your account and “personalize your experience based on information from other devices besides the ones you use to log into Twitter.” This means if you visit sports websites on your laptop, you might see sports-related ads when you're browsing Twitter on your mobile device.

In a blog post, Twitter said it has “expanded” the way it uses and stores data from other websites that integrate content from the platform, such as embedded tweets. The company is storing “web page visit data,” but not for users in the European Union or European Free Trade Association states.

This data collection “will allow us to further improve and personalize our services, connecting you with the stories, brands and organic content you care about most,” the company said.

Meanwhile, Twitter said that some of its partnership agreements allow “non-personal, aggregated, and device-level data” to be connected with personal information such as your name and email, “but only when you give your consent to those partners.”

Read full article and learn more about Privacy Policy here.

Here’s How To Make Sure You, Your Business & Website Is FTC Compliant

By now it should be clear how important it is for you to be FTC compliant. But how can you do that without spending $7,500-$8,000 or more on Internet Attorneys?

Smart business owners around the world are doing it with the help ofFTC Guardian.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover on the training:

Real-Life Examples of People Who Didn’t Think They Were At Risk, But Who Got Nailed By The FTC, And Why It Could Happen To You, Too

The 3 Enormous Powers The FTC Has That Can Change Your Life – And Your Family’s Life – Forever!

How to Avoid FTC Claims When Collecting Leads With Optin Forms

3 Privacy Policy Mistakes Every Digital Marketer Is Making, And Why You’re In The FTC Crosshairs.

And Much More…

Remember: legal protection is a massively important part of your business, and it’s one you cannot afford to ignore any longer.

Go here to register for our next FREE training and make your business is FTC compliant today!

7 Worst Apps for Privacy Concerns

Allyn Cutts — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 18:24:19 +0000

7 Worst Apps for Privacy Concerns

AT FTC Guardian we focus a lot on Privacy. In fact, our next Member Hangout is going to be all about Privacy Policies – what they are, why you need them, and when/how to update them. The following article is a real eye opener regarding apps and your privacy. Speaking for myself, I had no idea that my beloved Words With Friends was up to such antics.

When you’re browsing through the millions of apps available from the Apple and Android app stores, you’ll notice that close to 98% of them are free to download. That’s great if you’re looking to fill up your gadget, but many free apps, and some paid ones, do come with a hidden price: your privacy.

Permissions 101

When apps install on your gadget, they request permission to access certain information or phone features. Sometimes they need this information and sometimes it’s not necessary.

A messaging app, for example, needs permission to access to your contacts and Wi-Fi connection to do its job. However, a Flashlight app doesn’t need to know your location or have full Internet access.

Most people just hit “Accept” and install apps without reading what they do. Want to see something funny? Go to bit.ly/1Mpwz4O and watch people’s reactions when they actually read the permissions they’re approving.

Of course, that leaves us with the problem of how to tell if an app is on the up-and-up with its permissions. Most don’t tell you what they use the data for, although some will if you contact the developer. Fortunately, you don’t have to dig into every single app.

PrivacyGrade

A few years ago, Carnegie Mellon University set up a site called PrivacyGrade (bit.ly/1NB9fBk) that analyzes popular Android apps to find out what permissions they ask for and how they use the information. Then it gives each one a grade from A to D.

This scoring system is a little tricky, though. Part of PrivacyGrade’s scoring system is looking at the permissions the app uses and the libraries.

Libraries are third-party bits of code from other developers that app creators can drop in. Many of the ones you’ll see are from advertising networks, although some are utilities to track how the game is working, or even from Facebook for easier logins to the app.

An app with a lot of advertising libraries is going to get a worse score than an app just running utility libraries. That’s because an advertiser can track you across any app that includes its library.

Here are 7 popular apps that PrivacyGrade gives a low score and why you may want to think twice.

1. Draw Something Free: D

This popular app lets you play a version of remote Pictionary with friends. It’s fun, but it includes several advertiser libraries and uses the “Read phone status and identity” permission to pass advertisers your phone number, call log, signal information, carrier and more.

2. Words With Friends: D

This popular app is like a fast game of Scrabble, and it’s great for brushing up on your vocabulary or being humbled by small children. However, it’s from the same developer as “Draw Something,” so it’s no surprise it has the same privacy worries. However, it goes a step further with the “Precise location” permission. While it does use your location for the game, it also uses it to show you location-based ads.

3. GO Locker: D

This app acts as a screen lock for your phone, and promises to be more secure and smarter than your gadget’s built-in screen lock. Naturally, that means it has to know a lot about your phone and requires just about every permission available, from your location to reading your text messages.

Oddly, it doesn’t have advertising libraries installed, although it could be sending data to advertisers using its own first-party code. However, it does link up and send your information to app stores besides Google Play. This is potentially dangerous since app stores besides Google often have malicious apps that can steal information from your phone. This could very well be a gateway app for unsecured apps or apps that do seriously hurt your privacy.

4. GO Weather Forecast & Widgets: D

From the same company that brought you GO Locker, this app brings you the weather and a forecast. However, like GO Locker, it uses a lot of its permissions to send data to app markets besides Google Play. After doing a little checking, it appears that every GO app, including GO Battery and GO SMS Pro, has this same design. I recommend steering clear of them.

Go to bit.ly/1OttgsJ for a weather app that won’t spy on you.

5. Camera360 Ultimate: D

Android’s default camera app is serviceable, but not fantastic. Camera360 Ultimate promises to add more camera modes, exclusive filters, free cloud storage, facial recognition, real-time “touch-ups” and more with no ads.

It doesn’t include any ad targeting libraries, but it does grab a lot of information, and is has the Baidu search engine library built in. Baidu is China’s answer to Google, and there’s no good explanation why a Chinese search engine might need things like the ability to turn your Wi-Fi on and off. In the same vein, the in-app purchases are powered by Alipay, which is a Chinese payment system.

To really take control of your smartphone’s camera, check out Camera FV-5 (bit.ly/1OHLZiP) for Android or Manual for Apple (bit.ly/1OjehOt).

6. Angry Birds: C

The first modern “viral” mobile game with more than 2 billion downloads since 2009, Angry Birds and most of its sequels and spinoffs don’t fare so well with privacy. Most include several targeted ad libraries that grab your phone identity information, which includes phone call logs, your signal, carrier, device ID and number.

Outside of PrivacyGrade’s score, “Angry Birds” also has the distinction of being one of the apps the NSA and British GCHQ targeted to snag user information from smartphones thanks to poor security. The newer versions of Angry Birds (bit.ly/1ieoYZv) aren’t as vulnerable, so they get a slightly higher “B.”

7. My Talking Tom: D

If you have kids around, “My Talking Tom” is an app you might get asked to download. It’s basically a cute little game where you adopt and take care of a kitten. However, its privacy settings aren’t so adorable.

It includes a whopping eight targeted ad libraries and, in addition to your phone’s identifying information, it sends the advertisers audio from the microphone as well. For a kids’ game, that’s creepy.

via 7 worst apps for privacy concerns

Here’s How To Make Sure You,
Your Business & Website Is FTC Compliant

By now it should be clear how important it is for you to be FTC compliant. But how can you do that without spending $7,500-$8,000 or more on Internet Attorneys?

Smart business owners around the world are doing it with the help of FTC Guardian.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover on the training:

Real-Life Examples of People Who Didn’t Think They Were At Risk, But Who Got Nailed By The FTC, And Why It Could Happen To You, Too

Why 2014 Was a Significant Year For Online Businesses, And Why You Should Be Worried!

The 3 Enormous Powers The FTC Has That Can Change Your Life – And Your Family’s Life – Forever!

How to Avoid FTC Claims When Collecting Leads With Optin Forms

3 Privacy Policy Mistakes Every Digital Marketer Is Making, And Why You're In The FTC Crosshairs.

And Much More…

Remember: legal protection is a massively important part of your business, and it’s one you cannot afford to ignore any longer.

Go here to register for our next FREE training and make your business is FTC compliant today!

Mystery Solved! FTC Reaches Settlement With Health App Vendor Over False Claims – iHealthBeat

Allyn Cutts — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 11:51:21 +0000

FTC Reaches Settlement With Health App Vendor Over False Claims

Just when I think I've seen it all, The Mole Detective appears… Details on the case below, and how this apps owners are being brought to justice for deceptive claims by the FTC.

Background

In February, an FTC complaint charged Avrom Lasarow and his company L Health with false advertising of its Mole Detective apps (Slabodkin, Health Data Management, 8/14).

An FTC review of the apps' advertising found that the company had “deceptively claimed the apps accurately analyzed melanoma risk and could assess such risk in early stages.”

The developer and initial marketer of the Mole Detective apps, New Consumer Solutions, agreed to a $3,930 settlement. However, Lasarow — the owner of L Health, a separate, British marketing firm that acquired the app — initially had refused to settle with FTC (iHealthBeat, 2/24).

Details of Settlement

Under the new settlement, Lasarow is “prohibited from making any misleading or unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits or efficacy of any product or service, including that a device detects or diagnoses melanoma.”

Jessica Rich, director of FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a statement said, “We haven't found any scientific evidence that Mole Detective can accurately assess melanoma risk.”

The settlement also included a fine against Lasarow of more than $58,000. The fine has been suspended based on Lasarow's inability to pay it.

via FTC Reaches Settlement With Health App Vendor Over False Claims – iHealthBeat

Here’s How To Make Sure You,
Your Business & Website Is FTC Compliant

By now it should be clear how important it is for you to be FTC compliant. But how can you do that without spending $7,500-$8,000 or more on Internet Attorneys?

Smart business owners around the world are doing it with the help of FTC Guardian.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover on the training:

Real-Life Examples of People Who Didn’t Think They Were At Risk, But Who Got Nailed By The FTC, And Why It Could Happen To You, Too

Why 2014 Was a Significant Year For Online Businesses, And Why You Should Be Worried!

The 3 Enormous Powers The FTC Has That Can Change Your Life – And Your Family’s Life – Forever!

How to Avoid FTC Claims When Collecting Leads With Optin Forms

3 Privacy Policy Mistakes Every Digital Marketer Is Making, And Why You're In The FTC Crosshairs.

And Much More…

Remember: legal protection is a massively important part of your business, and it’s one you cannot afford to ignore any longer.

Go here to register for our next FREE training and make your business is FTC compliant today!