The state of Florida has accused Roku, the platform powering millions of smart TVs and streaming devices across the US, of selling children’s data to third parties without their or their parents’ consent.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said in a statement that Roku collected viewing habits, voice recordings, and precise geolocation from kids without approval from parents.
After collecting the data, the company, which reaches 145 million people across half of US households, allegedly made it available to advertisers and sold it to data brokers, Uthmeier’s office said.
One of those data brokers is Kochava, a large mobile app data analytics company. Apparently, they’re still at it despite already facing a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission. It claimed in 2022 that the firm sells highly sensitive consumer data.
“Roku’s practices violated Florida’s privacy and consumer-protection laws by failing to obtain parental consent before selling or processing children’s data and by misrepresenting the effectiveness of its privacy controls and opt-out tools,” said Uthmeier’s office in a press release.
The lawsuit also claims Roku ignored obvious indicators, such as when users installed its Kids Screensaver or Kids Theme Pack products.
“Roku knows that some of its users are children but has consciously decided not to implement industry-standard user profiles to identify which of its users are children,” said the AG office.
The lawsuit (PDF) was filed under the Florida Digital Bill of Rights (FDBR), which came into effect on July 1st, 2024. The law protects Florida residents’ privacy, including children’s data rights, and gives parents the ability to opt out of data processing for their kids.
The penalty for violating the FDBR is up to $50,000 per violation. That amount triples for violations where the consumer involved is a known child.
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