OpenX steals childern’s privacy

Adtech/data company “OpenX secretly collected location data and opened the door to privacy violations on a massive scale, including against children”
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2021/12/advertising-platform-openx-will-pay-2-million-collecting-personal

PRIVACY INFORMATION
Does K12 monitor your computer and How to Protect your Privacy Online

ETHICS — There isn’t a single school district with a K-12 CPO. In fact, it is still extremely rare for districts to hire even one full-time employee dedicated to privacy.
Student Privacy Bill Protection : No Parental Consent Needed for Data Mining

Anyone who tells you they don’t need privacy because they “have nothing to hide” is a sheep that will enable a total surveillance state. Just don’t do it. Privacies protect our basic human rights.

$2 million settlement b/c of COPPA and FTC Act violations, order to delete “all ad request data”:

As of today, OpenX ‘strongly recommends’ app vendors to include the user’s exact GPS location in RTB bid requests, and thus broadcasts it to many other data companies in an uncontrolled way.

And btw. OpenX ‘requires’ apps to include the user’s IP address.
https://docs.openx.com/publishers/s2s-openrtb-bidrequests/index.html#openrtb-bid-request-fields-for-app-inventory

The FTC’s investigation, however, did not focus on harvesting and sharing GPS location data (which it should) but on a specific form of Wi-Fi location tracking.

According to the complaint, OpenX used a ‘backdoor method’ to circumvent Android permissions.
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/ecf_1-_complaint.pdf

more
https://twitter.com/WolfieChristl/status/1472571090622951425
https://twitter.com/WolfieChristl/status/1472526992151035909