Violating children’s privacy laws
In a separate charge from the Federal Trade Commission, Microsoft were ordered to pay $20 million in fines for violating children’s privacy laws in June 2023. The charge pertains to Microsoft collecting personal information from children signed up to Xbox without a procedure in place to notify their parents or obtain parental consent. To make matters worse, Microsoft were also found guilty of illegally retaining and sharing the personal information they acquired. For a company concerned with growth and revenue, this fine can’t have been easy to swallow. Some good will come out of this though, with Microsoft bolstering protection rights for children under the age of 13 on its platforms – a positive for them and their parents.
