In a report, Us based FTC ordered InMobi, SoftBank-backed Indian mobile advertising firm to pay $950,000 civil penalties for tracking locations of “hundreds of millions of consumers – including children – without their knowledge or consent” to serve their geo-targeted advertising.
InMobi is subject to a $4 million penalty but the agency suspended the fine to $950,000 “based on the company’s financial condition”. This settlement comes at a time when InMobi is struggling to raise funds.
In its 17 page report, FTC said, “InMobi created a database built on information collected from consumers who allowed the company access to their geolocation information, combining that data with the wireless networks they were near to document the physical location of wireless networks themselves. They would use that database to infer the physical location of consumers based on the networks they were near, even when consumers had turned off location collection on their device.” .
FTC alleged that the advertisement company was tracking consumers’ locations without even when consumers denied permission to access their location information.
The agency said in the complaint that InMobi’s software also tracked location in thousands of apps “that were clearly directed at children, in spite of promising that it did not do so”. This location information was also tracked without getting a parent or guardian’s consent to collect and use a child’s personal information, thereby violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
The Indian based company has now been directed to delete the location information of consumers it collected without their consent, including all information it has collected from children and will be prohibited from further violations of Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. It will also be prohibited from further misrepresenting its privacy practices.
InMobi will also have to setup a comprehensive privacy program that will be independently audited every two years for the next 20 years.
InMobi Statement –
In certain instances, we inferred user location through the Wifi identifier as part of the SDK integration with publisher apps without express election by a user. While InMobi was not fined by the FTC for this practice, to implement best practices, going forward InMobi will only use WiFi information when serving location-based targeted advertising campaigns when an app user has authorized the app to collect and transmit the same. The errors were corrected in Q4 2015, and since then the company has been fully compliant with all COPPA regulations. InMobi operates across several countries and continents, and intend to adhere to the best practices related to the data and privacy requirements of all the countries.”