One Privacy Case is Settled, Another Begins

US firm Echometrix has paid $100,000 to settle a case with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over accusations of 'deceptive' selling of information about children's online activity to third parties for market intelligence purposes. Separately, this week another US firm was also accused of mobile tracking without permission.

Filed last September by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the complaint against Echometrix related to the firm's 'PULSE' software, which monitored tens of millions of unfiltered teen chats on blogs and online communities. EPIC said the product violated a federal law that restricts the gathering of data about children under the age of 13, and an investigation was started the following month.

Echometrix says the project shared 'certain anonymous, aggregated and truncated data - which did not include personally identifiable data such as first and last names, email addresses, or phone numbers' and notes that it voluntarily closed the project in the fourth quarter of 2009 after taking revenues of less than $1,000 from it.

This week's voluntary agreement is described as 'cooperative and amicable' by the company, and 'confirms... that [it has] implemented appropriate measures to enforce its privacy policies'. In addition, the firm has appointed 'a seasoned privacy specialist' to its Advisory Board. The company says it 'remains very enthusiastic about current products and future developments' and will continue to focus on 'tools and applications that protect children online, and offer parents control and transparency into their children's online activities.'

Cuomo, while acknowledging that the firm 'sells software that protects children by gathering information for parents about what their kids are doing online', said in a statement that 'at the same time it was marketing its data to outside companies without its customers' knowledge', concluding that the settlement 'prevents Echometrix from using the guise of children's safety to undermine children's privacy.'


Separately, a new complaint has been filed in a Los Angeles court against Manhattan-based ad firm Ringleader Digital, whose Media Stamp program is said to use new features of HTML 5 to track the browsing habits of users of iPhones and other hand-held mobile devices without giving them the chance to opt out. The complaint says Ringleader's software assigns mobile devices a 'unique' identifying number, posing 'obvious privacy concerns', and has been sold to a number of high profile clients including the likes of CNN, Travel Channel and Whitepages.com.