Eighteen organisations have 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 complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claim that Facebook's Messenger Kids app illegally collects children's personal information, even when parental consent is not given.
In addition, the letter says that Facebook has not added a COPPA-compliant mechanism to seek verifiable parental consent before collecting and managing information about users under the age of 13.
The Messenger Kids is a social network designed by Facebook for young children between the ages of 6 and 12 who cannot create their own Facebook accounts or use their parents' social network until they are 13 years old.
The organizations signing the complaint also say that such a mechanism would have to guarantee that the user giving consent for the data collection is the parent of the child using the Messenger Kids account, which is supposedly not the case at this point.
"The Messenger Kids app allows anyone who has a Facebook account and claims to be an adult to create and verify a Messenger Kids account," says the letter sent by the CCFC (Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood) to the FTC.
That is, although Messenger Kids requires the parent's Facebook account to create a Messenger Kids account and add contacts, but according to CCFC's tests, this is easily circumvented by simply creating a new Facebook account.
In addition, the complaint to the FTC declares that the Facebook Messenger Kids privacy policy is designed to be unclear and incomplete and does not follow the requirements of COPPA.
