Xanga.com Violated Children’s Online Privacy Act
The popular social networking website xanga.com has agreed to pay $1 million in civil penalties for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
Xanga.com agreed to settle a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission that alleged over the past five years the website allowed 1.7 million xanga.com accounts to be opened by children under age 13. With these accounts, Xanga.com collected personal information from these children including e-mail address, username, password, gender, phone numbers and cities.
The complaint filed in federal court in New York alleged that the website asked would-be users if they were over the age of 13 and if they answered “no,” they were directed to the terms and use that stated children under 13 could not use the website. Even so, the website did not cross check the data that included date of birth for registering to use the website.
“After collecting dates of birth from children indicating that they are under 13, the defendants enabled children to create blogs on Xanga.com that allowed them to share personal information with the public on the internet,” the complaint stated. The website failed to notify parents of their practices prior to collecting, using or disclosing the children’s personal information.
According to the FTC, Xanga.com is one of the most popular social networking sites on the internet. After setting up a personal profile, users can post information about themselves for other users to read and to respond to. Users can create their own pages that contain profile information, online journals, text, audio, video and other files. COPPA is designed to protect the safety and privacy of children online by prohibiting the unauthorized or unnecessary collection of children’s personal information online by operators of websites or online services. The FTC is charged with enforcing the statute.
United States of America v. Xanga.com, Inc., John Hiler and Marc Ginsburg, U.S. Dist. Court N.Y. No. 06-CIV 6853(SHS).