• by Wendy Davis , 8 hours ago

Disney has agreed to pay $10 million for allegedly collecting ad-targeting data from young YouTube users, in violation of the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday.

The proposed settlement stems from allegations that Disney uploaded child-directed videos to YouTube, including Mickey Mouse cartoons and clips from movies including "Frozen" and "Toy Story", but failed to label the clips as "Made for Kids." That omission enabled viewers of those videos to be served with targeted ads, the government alleged.

"Disney makes very popular child-directed videos available through YouTube and fails to properly mark videos as child-directed in some cases, allowing targeted advertising through collection of personal information from children without parental notice or consent," the FTC and Justice Department alleged in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

YouTube disables targeted advertising, comments and other features on videos that are labeled "Made for Kids" in order to comply with the federal children's privacy law, the complaint states.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which was passed more than 25 years ago, prohibits online companies from collecting personal data from children under 13, without parental consent. Since 2013, the FTC has defined personal data as including the kinds of persistent identifiers -- such as cookies -- that can be harnessed for targeted advertising.

In addition to the $10 million fine, Disney agreed to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and to establish a program to review whether videos it posts to YouTube should be labeled Made for Kids -- unless YouTube itself "implements measures to determine the age, age range, or age category of all YouTube users" and restricts data collection from users under 13 (or enables Disney to restrict data collection from those users).

The complaint alleges that Disney learned in 2000 that it had failed to mark children's videos as "Made for Kids" when YouTube said it had changed the labels on more than 300 videos from Not Made for Kids to Made for Kids.

"The redesignated videos included videos from The Incredibles, Coco, Toy Story, Tangled, Frozen, and Mickey Mouse that include subject matter, visual content, and music or other audio content directed to children," the complaint states.