San Diego County has filed a lawsuit against mobile advertising technology company AppLovin Corp., alleging that it bypassed parental controls to serve ads for adult dating services, alcohol, vaping and graphic sexual content in games played by children.
AppLovin, which helps developers find users and sell advertising in their apps, collected sensitive data from children’s devices even when parental controls and ad-tracking opt-outs were enabled, according to the complaint. This included “information precise enough to pinpoint where kids live, where they study and whether they are sleeping,” according to the complaint, filed with the San Diego Superior Court.
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The AppLovin case is one of three filed on Monday by San Diego County’s newly formed Consumer Fairness and Public Protection Unit, which was set up in response to what local officials describe as dwindling federal enforcement of consumer protections. The unit is suing gaming company Roblox Corp. for inadequate protections to stop adults posing as children and contacting young users. It’s also suing 3D-printing materials firm Polymaker for marketing certain materials to people assembling illegal, untraceable guns.
AppLovin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company’s policies prohibit collecting children’s data or using its technology to target kids with ads. It states it does not “knowingly collect personal information from children or serve advertisements to children,” in its policies.
The way a consumer typically interacts with AppLovin is by using an app or playing a mobile game that uses its technology to power ads for other apps.
San Diego County’s lawsuit alleges that AppLovin shows ads in apps marked appropriate for kids that depict sex acts, such as bondage. These ads appear on devices with parental controls enabled, according to the suit.
The complaint includes screenshots of some of the ads, including for a sexualized AI chatbot app, shown in a physics-based puzzle game installed on an Android device configured for a six-year-old with Google’s parental controls enabled. Another screenshot shows ads for cannabis gummies shown on a device with the same controls.
The two main app store operators, Apple and Google, offer ways to block app developers and ad tech companies from tracking children’s digital activity. AppLovin bypassed these settings using a technique known as fingerprinting to track children for ad-targeting purposes without parental consent, according to the complaint.
AppLovin “disregards child safety tools to harvest children’s sensitive personal information” to “feed it into the company’s artificial intelligence advertising engine,” the complaint said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission began investigating AppLovin for its advertising practices last year, Bloomberg reported. AppLovin’s Chief Financial Officer Matt Stumpf said the agency had closed its investigation without recommending enforcement action during an earnings call in August.
Top photo: The AppLovin logo on a smartphone in New York. Photographer: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg.
Topics Lawsuits
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