The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has imposed a £247,590 penalty on MediaLab.AI, Inc, concluding that the company allowed children to access Imgur for years without putting in place even basic age-checking safeguards required under UK data protection law. Following a long-running investigation, the regulator found that MediaLab failed to establish the age of Imgur users, processed the personal data of children under 13 without parental consent, and did not carry out a data protection impact assessment to identify or mitigate risks to younger users.
The startup was founded by Nino Dvalidze (pictured), an entrepreneur and a mother of two from the United Kingdom. Dvalidze told TechCrunch that the idea for Young Minds came from conversations with fellow parents, who are also worried about how to keep their children safe, while also allowing them to have access to the internet, which, she admitted, is "enormously helpful in terms of education and exploration and connection with so many people outside of your immediate zone of contacts."
Google has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a long-running lawsuit by parents and their children claiming its YouTube video app collected data from millions of U.S. kids under 13 so it could target them with ads. The Mountain View digital advertising and search giant manipulated children using their personal information into extending their time on YouTube, which in turn increased the number of targeted advertisements shown to them, and increased the revenue earned by Google,
