The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced it is launching “multiple nonpublic investigations” into companies that make popular smartphone and tablet mobile apps for children, to see if they violated federal children’s privacy laws. The announcement came along with the release of a new report from the FTC that surveyed 400 childrens’ apps and found them sorely lacking in privacy disclosure and options for parents, as well as that many apps transferred sensitive data from phone numbers to geolocation to developers, advertisers and other third parties, which the FTC worries could put kids at risk. As the FTC explained in its press release:
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