WTF?! Moment of the Week - Way to Go Pony Stars

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With all the news centering on the recent PSN outages and companies like Zynga failing to keep personal data… personal, you’d think that game companies would learn not to mess around with things like this.

It looks like yet another social gaming site has shown us that this isn’t the case, and messed up royally this week. Playdom, Disney’s very own social gaming arm was thrown a hefty $3 million fine this week for violating “the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule by illegally collecting and disclosing personal information from hundreds of thousands of children under age 13 without their parents’ prior consent.” This is apparently the worst fine of this sort ever handed out, a fact that should make Disney very proud. 

The problem centered around the fact that one of the companies many “online worlds” called Pony Stars was marketed to and created directly for kids, and as such nearly a half million little tikes under the age of thirteen joined up. As with any site, Pony Stars required personal information such as age, e-mail address and name; items that were then posted on the child’s personal profile. In our modern age of “everyone is out to get us” this was seen as a hotbed for potential pedophiliac stalkers and other “creepsters”.

“The FTC’s COPPA Rule requires that website operators notify parents and obtain their consent before they collect, use, or disclose children’s personal information," an FTC article about the matter read. "The Rule also requires that website operators post a privacy policy that is clear, understandable, and complete. The FTC alleged that Playdom and Marks failed to meet these requirements.”

This is a huge oversight by Disney, Playdom and many social networking sites in general and with it being the largest marketer of social networking programs, and an award-winning one at that, it makes this look that much more ridiculous.         

Disclaimer: This article is the work of one writer, and does not necessarily reflect the views of gamrFeed or VGChartz.