Microsoft is being fined $20 million by the US Federal Trade Commission for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by illegally gathering kids’ personal information and retaining it without parental consent. Along with paying the rather small fine (slightly more than a tenth of a percent of Microsoft’s most recent quarterly profit), the FTC is also requiring the company to update its account creation process for children to prevent collection and storage of data, and extend those responsibilities to third-party publishers that Microsoft shares such data with.

Source: The Register