• Violated children's privacy on Youtube: fine with Google, agreement with the Federal Trade Commission

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September 04, 2019Google has agreed to pay a $ 170 million fine to close the story, which accuses her of illegally collecting data on children without the consent of her parents via YouTube. The US authorities announced it.

The agreement was reached with the Federal Trade Commission and the attorney general of the State of New York. This is the highest fine ever imposed on the American law on the protection of children's online privacy.

Google has agreed to pay $ 170 million to close the investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (Ftc) and the State of New York on YouTube. The agreement, announced today, provides that Google and YouTube will pay 136 million to the Ftc and 34 million to the State of New York. It was the associations in defense of privacy that raised the case before the FTC, accusing Google of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

Sensitive data shared in secret?
It's not the only problem for Google. The company would also be targeted by the Irish regulatory authorities (Mountain View's European headquarters) for possible violations of privacy laws, according to the Financial Times.

Google would secretly use hidden web pages to pass the data of its users to advertisers, violating both the internal policy and the Gdpr, the European Privacy Regulation, which requires transparency and consent to data processing.

The financial newspaper quotes sources close to Brave, Google's rival little search engine. There would be documents that would show that the American technological giant "exploits personal data without sufficient control or concern for protection", for example information on users' health or political orientation, useful for personalized advertising. According to the Financial Times, Johnny Ryan, head of Brave policy, would have discovered pages hidden by Google and would have tried to monitor whether and to what extent the Californian group uses them to pass data to advertisers.

A Mountain View spokesman said that the company "does not offer personalized ads or send requests to solicit offers without the user's consent" and that, in any case, it will collaborate with the British and Irish authorities who are investigating advertising activities.