Stranger Danger: These Kids' Apps Collect the Most Data
During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents have relied on apps more than ever to educate and entertain their children. When selecting which apps to use, they’re concerned about what their kids are watching—but maybe not as much about what’s watching their kids back.
TheToyZone has stepped in to read the privacy policies of 107 popular children’s apps to see what kind of data they’re collecting. Of those, only 17 didn’t collect any data.
Before we get into a breakdown, here are some interesting facts up front: money-management apps tend to collect the most data (on average, 10.1 types of data), and science apps collect the least (on average, 2.4 types of data per app). In between are gaming (9.3), social media and messaging (6.5), video streaming (6.3), books and reading (5.2), educational (4.9), arts and crafts/drawing (4.5), music (4.4), coding (3.6), and nature and animals (3.4).
The apps on the list that collected the most data types are Greenlight Kids & Teen Banking (22), Pokémon Go (17), Animal Jam (16), Kinzoo Social (15), Messenger Kids (15), Roblox (15), YouTube Kids (15), Amazon Kids+ (14), Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp (13), and ArtWorkout (12).
TheToyZone's data types include: contact info, location, contacts, browsing history, search history, purchase, and usage data. Check out the infographic below for a rundown of the apps in each category that collect the most and least data.
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