17 organizations filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission accusing Facebook of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
The groups signing the FTC complaint allege that Facebook's Messenger Kids app illegally collects children's personal information, even when parental consent is not given.
Messenger Kids is a social network designed explicitly by Facebook for young children between the ages of 6 and 12 who cannot create or use their own Facebook accounts
Essentially, Facebook is accused of failing to add a COPPA-compliant mechanism to request verifiable parental consent before collecting and managing information about users under 13.
Additionally, Facebook would have to guarantee that the user giving consent to the data collection would be the parent of the child using the Messenger Kids account, which is supposedly not the case at this point.
The worrying thing is that although Messenger Kids requires the parent's Facebook account to create and add contacts, this is easily circumvented by creating a new Facebook and using it to create a new imaginary Messenger Kids account.
In fact, a letter has been sent to Mark Zuckerberg , signed by more than 100 experts and advocates, asking himto stop the Messenger Kids app as it undermines the healthy development of children.
