Hunton Andrews Kurth writes:
On June 24, 2020, the Washington State Attorney General (“Washington AG”) announced that it had settled an enforcement action against the owners of the “We Heart It” social media platform for alleged violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and the Washington State Consumer Protection Act. Under the consent decree, the defendants must pay $100,000, with an additional $400,000 suspended contingent upon compliance with the consent decree.
The Washington AG alleged that We Heart It, which has approximately 500,000 monthly active U.S. users, allowed children under the age of 13 (“U13”) to create accounts, collected U13 users’ personal information, and allowed third-party advertisers to collect data from U13 users, all without obtaining COPPA-compliant verifiable parental consent.
Read more on Privacy & Information Security Law Blog.