The company behind a number of well-known fansites for pop celebrities recently settled a civil case over their efforts to collect personal data for kids who visited the online destinations.
Artist Arena, which runs BieberFever.com, SelenaGomez.cm, RihannaNow.com and the defunct DemiLovatoFanClub, agreed to pay $1 million in penalties to settle federal charges about data collection on children younger than 13, according to a report from the
New York Times. This included kids' names, email addresses, home addresses and cellphone numbers. In all, about 101,000 kids provided this information without their parents' permission.
"These were fan sites that knew that a very substantial percentage of users were 12 or under," David Vladeck, the director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection, told the newspaper. "There is really no excuse for violations like these."
Matt Cullina, the chief executive officer for
Identity Theft 911, writes regularly about the dangers kids can face when browsing the Web, and other potential identity theft threats that their parents will have to look out for.
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