US trade body penalises InMobi for 'tracking' consumers

The US Federal Trade Commission slapped a fine of $950,000 (about Rs 6 crore) on the Bengaluru-based mobile advertising firm

InMobi, the Bengaluru-based mobile advertising firm has been slapped with a fine of $950,000 (about Rs 6 crore) by the US Federal Trade Commission after it deceptively tracked the locations of hundreds of millions of consumers — including children — without their knowledge or consent to serve them geo-targeted advertising.

A FTC statement late on Wednesday night made the charge that InMobi, which helps advertisers reach out to mobile application users, misrespreented that its advertising software would only track consumers’ locations when they opted for it and in a manner consistent with their device’s privacy settings.

According to the complaint, InMobi was actually tracking consumers’ locations whether or not the apps using InMobi’s software asked for consumers’ permission to do so, and even when consumers had denied permission to access their location information.

“InMobi tracked the locations of hundreds of millions of consumers, including children, without their consent, in many cases totally ignoring consumers’ express privacy preferences,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “This settlement ensures that InMobi will honor consumers’ privacy choices in the future, and will be held accountable for keeping their privacy promises.”

The FTC alleges that InMobi also violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting this information from apps that were clearly directed at children, in spite of promising that it did not do so as soon as it was discovered about the technical error that led to delivering ads to customers without their knowledge.

“During the investigation by FTC, InMobi discovered that there was a technical error at InMobi’s end that led to the process not being correctly implemented in all cases. As a result, some COPPA sites were served with interest-based campaigns on the InMobi Network. InMobi promptly notified the FTC of this issue as soon as it was discovered and has made it clear from the outset that this was by no way means deliberate. Any family safe ads that may have formed part of targeted campaigns would have been undertaken to target the adult owner of the device,” InMobi said.  InMobi claims it delivers ads to over 1.3 billion devices globally and is a leader in China.

“The errors were corrected in Q4 2015, and since then, InMobi has been fully compliant with all COPPA regulations. InMobi operates across several countries and continents, and intend to adhere to the best practices related to the data and privacy requirements of all the countries,” InMobi said.