Category: Mobile Security

FTC issues amendments to COPPA that could affect mobile gaming

Earlier this month, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a U.S. agency committed to promoting consumer protection, issued a call to the mobile applications industry to bolster their security measures for applications that are designed for children. Mobile gaming application are rampantly popular among children, and the FTC believes that the majority of these applications do not have adequate security measures in place to protect the information of consumers. The agency has released amendments to the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) this week detailing some of the changes that must be made to mobile gaming and the applications business in general.

Developers banned from collecting information from children

According to the COPPA amendments, mobile gaming applications are completely forbidden from collecting personal data from users that are under the age of 13. Developers will have to received parental consent in order to obtain this information. The ban keeps mobile gaming applications from collecting geographic information as well in an attempt to provide young consumers with another layer of protection. Geographic information is often used in marketing to target specific demographics.

Developers tasked with securing personal information

The changes to the COPPA law also close a loophole that allowed applications to collect a wide assortment of information from consumers. These applications often use third party solutions to acquire personal information from users. The FTC notes that developers and applications providers will need to take reasonable steps in securing the protection of a child’s personal information and ensure that this information is kept confidential.

COPPA changes may be difficult to comply with due to consumer honesty

Changes to COPPA may have an impact on the mobile gaming sector, but app developers are likely to adapt well to the changes. There are concerns that children often use mobile applications without the consent of their parents. Protecting the information of young consumers is largely linked to the honesty of these consumers, which can be a problematic issue as young consumers tend to bend the truth in order to gain access to applications that may not be suitable for their age group.

Life360 has announced that it already has 25 million members and that is rapidly rising.

A geolocation app for smartphones called Life360 has been designed to allow families to be able to monitor the locations of their members, has announced that it predicts that it will have broken the 25 million registered user mark by the end of 2012.

This will mean that the company will become serious competition for the wider known Foursquare.

In fact, Foursqure, though it may be much higher profile, just passed the 25 million user mark in September 2012. That company is also based on a geolocation application. Both of those businesses first opened in 2008, but while Foursquare was able to raise more than $71 million, Life360 was only able to raise $6.85 million.

The Life360 chief exec is now predicting that its geolocation app will surpass the competition.

Chris Hulls, the chief executive of Life360 has announced that he believes that his geolocation app will have passed the audience size of Foursquare within the next couple of months. He has justified his prediction by saying that his company is experiencing a far higher growth rate than the competition. That said, he didn’t share any specific figures regarding the growth rates of either company.

Hulls also declined to reveal how many of his geolocation app’s registered members are actually regular users who are actively using the service. The most specific statement that he would provide was that it was a “pretty high ratio”.

In a phone conversation, Hulls explained that “We’ve really hit an inflection point in the company in terms of the family network going digital. We want to be the company that really owns your family life on the phone.”

The company used a new press release to announce this new membership milestone and, at the same time, launched a new brightly colored website branding style. Furthermore, it also announced that two new features would be added to its geolocation app. These are designed to help tech savvy parents to achieve greater piece of mind. They include “geofencing” through its Places feature, and map view crime data.