Another CCPA Enforcement Action Issued

Hello all, and happy Thursday! 

Data privacy enforcement is ramping up in the Golden State. California’s Office of the Attorney General has officially issued its third enforcement action against mobile app developer Tilting Point Media. Specifically, its game, “SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off," was found to collect and share children’s data without parental consent in the mobile game. Unsurprisingly, a game based off of the SpongeBob cartoon show meets the criteria for being targeted at a “known child” under California and Federal law. As a result, Titling Point Media was hit with a $500,000 fine for violations of both the CCPA and COPPA. 

How did this happen? 

Tilting Point’s game did have a more child-friendly version of its game but access to that version was dependent on the child entering their age correctly. The state AG found that Tilting Point’s age screen was not neutral, encouraging inaccurate entries. That’s no good, but perhaps more significantly, Titling Point also accidentally misconfigured the third-party SDKs used to develop the app resulting in the collection and sale of kids’ data without parental consent. 

Two things stand out to me. The first is that the crux of this violation hinged on poor SDK governance, a bad practice that is very easy to fall into. As a result, this enforcement action should serve as a reminder that developers need to be trained on data privacy. It’s perfectly possible your applications are collecting user data without your knowledge if your development team isn’t aware of the data privacy implications of the SDKs it uses. 

Second, the state AG’s press release (which you can find in our news stories below), indicates that Tilting Point media was given the opportunity to take corrective action and did so—but not to the extent that it fully cured the violations. It’s possible this contributed to the lower financial penalty in this action, especially considering that the violation involved children’s data.  

What this signifies is that data privacy is hard to do after the fact. It’s always going to be easier to become proactively compliant than it is to go into firefighting mode once you receive a letter from a regulator. 

Best, 

Arlo 

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