MS to pay $20M settlement for illegally collecting children’s personal data

techcrunch.com

22 points·hassanahmad··5 comments

$20 million for a 2.3 Trillion dollar company illegally harvesting data on children is like fining someone who earns minimum wage 25 cents for stealing your wallet and letting them both keep the wallet and pay the fine out from the money in the wallet.

What a joke.

Basically a tax on theft.

"Those kids have no real economic value, anyway." Microsoft /s

Actually it's even worse because you would at least get 25 cents but the children being exploited won't ever see any of that money.

Also I'm not sure on the maths but I think you're being very generous with 25 cents. Shouldn't it be closer to a fraction of a cent?

> Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment, but Xbox boss Dave McCarthy said in a blog post... the data was “never used, shared, or monetized.”

Future news, Microsoft gets a fine (more like a rounding error in their books) because turn it out they shared that data with advertisers and claim it's due to glitch. Dave McCarthy wrote a blog post saying "Oopsie! I'd like to remind you that Microsft is committed to users privacy, for real this time, looking forward to seeing you again soon"

I have a feeling their next blog post is already approved, just waiting the case

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