A man has filed a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) claiming Alphabet-owned YouTube is in violation of the UK Age-Appropriate Design Code. In a first-of-its-kind complaint, Duncan McCann, who works for the children's advocacy group 5Rights, and is a father of three, alleges YouTube is harvesting young children’s data. In a statement, Mr McCann said, “Imagine YouTube as an adult stranger following your child ‘online’ with a virtual clipboard recording everything they do... That is what is happening every day and they are not just doing it with your child. They are doing it with up to 5 million other UK children." In addition to asking for the unlawfully collected children's data to be destroyed, the complaint also asks the ICO to consider ordering the deletion of any machine learning systems trained on the collected data. Additional reporting from BBC News highlights how children often use family devices to watch YouTube videos where data collection is stored against an adult account. An Alphabet official said under 13's should make an account with YouTube Kids.
What is this page?
You are reading a summary article on the Privacy Newsfeed, a free resource for DPOs and other professionals with privacy or data protection responsibilities helping them stay informed of industry news all in one place. The information here is a brief snippet relating to a single piece of original content or several articles about a common topic or thread. The main contributor is listed in the top left-hand corner, just beneath the article title.
The Privacy Newsfeed monitors over 300 global publications, of which more than 5,750 summary articles have been posted to the online archive dating back to the beginning of 2020. A weekly roundup is available by email every Friday.
