Over a Dozen Children’s and Consumer Advocacy Organizations Request FTC to Investigate Facebook for Deceptive Practices

Common Sense Media, Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, Center for Digital Democracy, and over a dozen organizations called upon the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Facebook has engaged in unfair or deceptive practices in violation of Sec 5 of the FTC Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Advocates are concerned that Facebook employed unfair practices by charging children for purchases made without parental consent and often without parental awareness. They point to court documents to demonstrate substantial injury to consumers, including one teenager who incurred $6,500 of charges in just a few weeks, and request rates for refunds were 20 times higher than the usual rate of refund requests. Additonally, unsealed documents show that Facebook was aware that many of the games it offered were popular with children under age 13 and were in fact being played by children under 13. COPPA makes it unlawful for an “operator of a Web site or online service directed to children, or any operator that has actual knowledge that it is collecting or maintaining personal information from a child, to collect personal information from a child” unless it has obtained verifiable parental consent and provided appropriate disclosures.