Games like Angry Birds, Candy Crush, and others have been shown to be spying on kids. Most kids these days spend their free time playing mobile phone games since they are so readily available. Addiction to mobile gaming, especially at a young age, poses serious risks to the user. These games have been exposed as kid snatchers. The most recent research from a security website indicates that the games in question capture and transmit user data to the advertising sector.
Pixelate found that the vast majority of gaming applications for both Android and iOS provide their user data to the advertising sector. When children utilise the smartphone version of games like Angry Birds 2, the developers can collect personal information about them. The phenomenon was also observed in the popular Candy Crush Saga app. Similarly, it was discovered that applications designed to help kids with their colouring and arithmetic assignments were also collecting personal information without their knowledge or consent. Apps track kids’ whereabouts and share such data with businesses who are aiming to target customers with similar tastes. The data acquired by the apps is also shared with third parties.
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Pixalate classified every app that may be appropriate for kids as part of its study. When it came to applications aimed towards kids, the business kept tabs on over 391,000 titles in the Apple App Store and Google Play.
According to the company’s blog, “Pixalate uses automated processing derived from a combination of signals (which is at times coupled with human intervention) to determine if an app is likely to be child-directed.” These signals include the app’s category, sub-category, content rating, and contextual signals (specifically, child-related keywords in the app’s title or description).
More than 8% of apps in the Apple App Store and 7% of apps in the Google Play Store are aimed at kids, according to research by Pixelate. About 40% of kid-friendly applications can potentially acquire parents’ contact details. According to the study, applications aimed at children are 42 percent more likely to share users’ personal information with third-party advertising. More than 12,000 applications aimed towards children have been found to have no detectable privacy policy.
