InMobi’s Illegal Location Tracking Debacle Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg And Regulators Are Chomping At The Bit
InMobi’s Illegal Location Tracking Debacle Is Just The Tip Of The Iceberg And Regulators Are Chomping At The Bit
Ad Exchanger
Allison Schiff
InMobi was the first mobile ad network to get whipped by the Federal Trade Commission under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) for tracking geolocation without parental consent – and it’s not going to be the last.
Up until now, the FTC has only used COPPA to go after developers and website operators for allowing third-party advertisers to collect personally identifiable information from their under-13 users.
Now the FTC has its eye on the middleman.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a lot of other ad networks doing what inMobi was doing,” Fitzpatrick said.
The inMobi case boils down to the company’s seemingly cavalier attitude toward the opt-in process. Other than that, inMobi was operating in a similar fashion to all the other ad networks and exchanges out there – aggregating supply, matching it with demand and tracking whatever data they could get their hands on to ensure that the placements were as targeted as possible.