InMobi has agreed to settle charges from US FTC and will pay nearly $1 million in penalties.

Illegal location tracking charges have been placed against Indian-based mobile advertising company InMobi by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The mobile ad network is subject to a $4 million fine by the FTC for deceptively tracking the locations of consumers. However, the fine was lowered to $950,000, due to the company’s financial condition.

Hundreds of millions of consumers were tracked, including children.

The FTC alleges that InMobi illegally tracked consumers’ locations and used this information for behaviorally targeted advertising. InMobi’s advertising software tracked the locations of consumer’s when they opted in, but not always in accordance with their device’s privacy settings. The company was actually tracking the locations of consumers regardless of whether or not the apps using the company’s software asked the consumer’s permission. Even when consumer denied permission to access their location information, they were tracked anyway.

To make matters worse, according to the FTC, InMobi also violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It did so by collecting information from applications that were directed at children, even though InMobi promised that it didn’t.

What the FTC discovered was that InMobi developed a database built on the information the company gathered from consumers who allowed InMobi to access their geolocation data. This data was combined with the wireless networks that were near consumers in order to document the physical location of the actual wireless networks. The company then used that database to deduce the consumer’s physical location based on the networks they were close to. This occurred even when they had the location collection feature of their device turned off.

In addition to its illegal location tracking fine, InMobi must adhere to stiff rules.

Aside from paying the $950,000 fine, InMobi must also delete all the data it collected from children. The company will be prohibited from collecting the location information from consumers without their express consent. They will also be required to honor the location privacy settings of their consumers. Additionally, information collected without consent must also be deleted.

The settlement resulting from the illegal location tracking fiasco will also require InMobi to set up a comprehensive privacy program. For the next 20 years, this privacy program will be independently audited every two years.

A recent ComScore study revealed a positive trend in the use of m-commerce shopping channels.

ComScore has released the results of one of its newest studies. It showed that mobile commerce adoption was on the rise and usage increased by 40 percent. Moreover, mobile recorded a much higher growth than desktop. E-commerce rose by 11 percent during the same span of time.

Overall, the total discretionary retail growth was up by 4 percent during the first quarter of 2016.

The study revealed a 3 percent year over year increase in total digital commerce dollars share held by mobile. The mobile commerce adoption and use share increased from 16.9 percent in Q1 2015 to 18.6 percent in Q1 2016.

Consumers continue to spend only small amounts of money on m-commerce platform purchases. This, despite the fact that they use this method very frequently during the shopping journey. In fact, mobile shopping is considered to be a highly popular mainstream activity. However, data shows that consumers aren’t spending there.

Mobile commerce adoption is rapidly climbing but the spending over that channel isn’t rising as fast.

Consumers spend two thirds (66 percent) of their total retail time on smartphones. Equally, those same consumers spend only 19 percent of their total retail dollars over m-commerce shopping. Conversely, the opposite was true for desktop using consumers. Those shoppers spent 34 percent of their retail time on laptops and desktops. At the same time, they spent 81 percent of their retail dollars on those computers.

That figure represents a gap of 47 percent. Companies may consider evaluating that statistic as the months and years pass.

When it comes to mobile commerce adoption, the holiday shopping season in 2015 played a critical role. Retail traffic skyrocketed over digital channels. M-commerce outpaced e-commerce every single day from November 1 to the end of the year. Black Friday and Cyber Monday both saw well over 200 million visits in the retail category over mobile channels. As a whole, mobile shopping jumped by 60 percent from the 2014 holiday shopping season to that of 2015. There were 8.1 billion holiday shopping visits over mobile apps and 9.8 billion visits over mobile web last year.