Google and YouTube pay $170M COPPA penalty

The Federal Trade Commission has announced that Google LLC and its subsidiary YouTube LLC have agreed to pay a federal civil money penalty of $136 million and a New York State penalty of $34 million to settle allegations that YouTube violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule by collecting personal information—in the form of persistent identifiers that are used to track users across the Internet—from viewers of child-directed channels, without first notifying parents and getting their consent. YouTube earned millions of dollars by using the identifiers, commonly known as cookies, to deliver targeted ads to viewers of these channels, according to the complaint.

Google and YouTube also agreed to develop, implement, and maintain a system that permits channel owners to identify their child-directed content on the YouTube platform so that YouTube can ensure it is complying with COPPA. In addition, the companies must notify channel owners that their child-directed content may be subject to the COPPA Rule’s obligations and provide annual training about complying with COPPA for employees who deal with YouTube channel owners.

For additional information, see "YouTube pays $170M for COPPA violations," in BankersOnline's Penalty pages.