Proactive Investors - YouTube has been accused of collecting the viewing data of UK children under 13, breaching UK data privacy code.
Campaigner Duncan McCann suggests the site is gathering data about the videos children watch, where they are watching and what device they are watching it on and has filed an official complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), according to the BBC.
The video streaming platform, which recently saw its chief executive Susan Wojcicki step down, said its services are not intended for children under 13.
Instead, it offers a separate app, YouTube Kids, as well as a supervised experience which requires parental control.
However, McCann argues that plenty of children watch YouTube content on family devices, where data is gathered by default, although YouTube argues it treats all children’s content as if children were viewing it, even on adult accounts.
It is believed McCann's complaint is the first test of the ICO children’s code, which was introduced in 2020.
This is not the first time YouTube, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet Inc, has been in hot water over children’s data.
Back in 2019, it was fined US$170mln by a US regulator to settle allegations it collected children’s personal data without their parents' consent.