Tag: Technology

HyperBeard, a developer of apps that are popular with children has agreed to pay $150,000 and to delete personal information it illegally collected from children under 13 to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations. In a complaint filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC, the Commission alleges that HyperBeard, Inc. violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule (COPPA Rule) by allowing third-party ad networks to collect personal information in the form of persistent identifiers to track users of the company’s child-directed apps, without notifying parents or obtaining verifiable parental consent. The ad networks used the identifiers to target ads to children using HyperBeard’s apps.

Tapplock settled FTC allegations that it deceived consumers by falsely claiming that its Internet-connected smart locks were designed to be “unbreakable” and that it took reasonable steps to secure the data it collected from users.

A Canadian company, RevenueWire, and its CEO, Roberta Leach, will pay $6.75 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges they laundered credit card payments for, and assisted and facilitated, two tech support scams previously sued by the FTC. According to the FTC, RevenueWire entered into contracts with payment processors to obtain merchant accounts to process credit card charges for its own sales of eBooks and software. The contracts prohibited RevenueWire from submitting third-party sales through its merchant accounts. In reality, however, RevenueWire used its accounts to process credit card charges and collect payments from consumers on behalf of ICE and Vast, two companies that allegedly used tech support scams to bilk consumers out of millions of dollars.