FTC, DOJ Settle With WW App Over Kids' Privacy Claims

The owners of a weight loss app marketed to kids as young as 8 illegally collected their data without parental consent, DOJ and the FTC announced Friday in a $1.5 million settlement. WW, formerly Weight Watchers, and its subsidiary Kurbo violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the agencies said. They “marketed weight management services for use by children as young as eight, and then illegally harvested their personal and sensitive health information,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said. “Our order against these companies requires them to delete their ill-gotten data, destroy any algorithms derived from it, and pay a penalty for their lawbreaking.” DOJ filed the complaint on behalf of the FTC in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The defendants “possessed actual knowledge” that its application collected personal information like names, numbers and emails, plus information like height, weight, food intake and physical activity, DOJ said: They didn’t notify parents about the collection, as required by COPPA. The settlement isn’t an admission of wrongdoing, said Kurbo General Counsel Michael Colosi in a statement: “Kurbo takes child privacy very seriously ... Data collected in Kurbo’s paid counseling program is used in strict compliance with parental consent solely to help children learn better eating habits.” Limited data received in the free app was “designed to be collected in an anonymous environment and used solely for the purpose of helping the users develop better eating habits,” he said. Kurbo didn’t target children with ads, sell data to third parties or monetize its users in any way, he added: “No parents or children ever complained that Kurbo used their personal data in an inappropriate manner.”