A look at how game apps track kids' data as a lawsuit accuses Google and Twitter ad businesses, and a popular app maker, of violating children's privacy law
New York Times : Tweets: @jenvalentino , @nickconfessore , @manjusrii , @jugander , @jason_kint , @leoniehaimson , and @profcarroll Tweets: Jennifer Valentino-DeVries / @jenvalentino : In a new lawsuit, New Mexico's attorney general accuses Google of ignoring warnings from researchers that children's apps in its Play store were violating kids' privacy law. With @natashanyt, @Aaron_Krolik, @mhkeller http://www.nytimes.com/... Nick Confessore / @nickconfessore : NEW: from @jenvalentino + @natashanyt + Co.: At least twenty popular children's apps on Android and iPhone have collected data, including physical location, about kids using the apps, potentially violating federal law, an @nytimes investigation reveals. http://www.nytimes.com/... Dr Belinda Barnet / @manjusrii : The study this spring showed not only that more than half of children's apps on Android were sharing tracking ID numbers but also that 5 percent collected children's *location* or contact information without their parents' permission. https://nyti.ms/... Johan Ugander / @jugander : Interesting case involving user interface defaults and COPPA: is it conscionable to require “a minimum of six taps” (vs. one) to declare an age below 13? New Mexico AG brings suit against game designer. Also names Google, Admob, and more. https://www.nytimes.com/... pic.twitter.com/VWgSGQajO4 Jason Kint / @jason_kint : Google is having a very, very, very bad day...1 Lost EU Copyright fight: http://www.bbc.com/...2 TGIF Breitbart leak: http://www.breitbart.com/...3 Brave lawsuit: http://www.nytimes.com/...4 Senate Commerce: http://www.cnet.com/...5 Sued by state AG: http://www.nytimes.com/... Leonie Haimson / @leoniehaimson : NM AG filed a lawsuit vs Fun Kid Racing, like hundreds of other Android game apps, that it violates children's privacy & federal law. “I don't think it's right. I don't think that's any of their business, location or anything like that.” https://nyti.ms/2N90yFh h/t @cherkies David Carroll / @profcarroll : New lawsuit by New Mexico AG against mobile game and ad networks for COPPA child data privacy law violations exposes a Wild West of ads tracking and targeting kids. http://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The New York Times investigation behind this lawsuit found at least twenty popular children's apps on Android and iPhone collecting location data and tracking identifiers, and New Mexico's attorney general is using those findings as the evidentiary basis for a COPPA suit naming Google, Twitter's ad business, AdMob, and the maker of Fun Kid Racing. The complaint centers on Google allegedly ignoring researchers' warnings about apps in its Play store.
The story sits early in a data trail that kept growing: a year later the Facebook analytics SDK was shown transmitting heart-rate and pregnancy-intent data from popular apps, and by 2022 a [[a:979751|Pixalate study found roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the top 1,000 kids' apps still sending location data to the ad industry]].
First-order effects
- Google, Twitter's ad business, AdMob, and Fun Kid Racing's developer now face state enforcement over COPPA compliance, with the NYT's twenty-app dataset serving as documented evidence rather than press criticism.
- App Store and Play Store operators come under immediate pressure to audit children's categories themselves, since the lawsuit treats distribution platforms as accountable for what they host.
Second-order effects
- Ad-tech SDK vendors serving children's apps are pushed toward built-in consent gates and data minimization, because each state-level suit raises the liability cost of shipping tracking identifiers through kids' games.
- Other state attorneys general gain a reusable template — pair an investigative dataset with a COPPA filing — lowering the cost of the next suit and pushing developers to strip ad SDKs from children's apps or accept lower ad revenue.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, children's privacy enforcement migrates from case-by-case litigation to platform-level gating, where Apple and Google police SDK data flows before apps ship; the 2022 Pixalate figures suggest voluntary compliance alone did not close the gap.
- COPPA exposure becomes one more regulatory lever over Google's advertising stack, compounding the antitrust scrutiny its ad-business practices already drew by 2020.
The trend: Children's app data collection is shifting from researcher exposés to state attorney-general enforcement, with app stores increasingly positioned as the compliance choke point.