Inmobi, the Bengaluru-based Mobile advertisingfirm has been slapped with a fine of $950,000 (about Rs 6 crore) by the US Federal Trade Commission after it deceptively tracked the locations of hundreds of millions of consumers including children without their knowledge or consent to serve them geo-targeted advertising.
A Federal trade commission in statement late on Wednesday night made the charge that InMobi, which helps advertisers reach out to mobile application users, misrespreented that its advertising software would only track consumers’ locations when they opted for it and in a manner consistent with their device’s privacy settings.
“InMobi tracked the locations of hundreds of millions of consumers, including children, without their consent, in many cases totally ignoring consumers’ express privacy preferences,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
“This settlement ensures that InMobi will honor consumers’ privacy choices in the future, and will be held accountable for keeping their privacy promises.
” When contacted, InMobi said, "With best intentions to adhere to COPPA requirements, InMobi implemented a process to exclude any publisher's site or app identified as a COPPA app from interest-based, behavioral advertising.
During the investigation by FTC, InMobi discovered that there was a technical error at InMobi's end that led to the process not being correctly implemented in all cases.
As a result, some COPPA sites were served with interest-based campaigns on the InMobi network .
InMobi promptly notified the FTC of this issue as soon as it was discovered and has made it clear from the outset that this was by no way means deliberate. Any family safe ads that may have formed part of targeted campaigns would have been undertaken to target the adult owner of the device.