Two of BBB National Programs’ Self-Regulatory Watchdogs Bring Azerion Gaming Website and App into Compliance with Privacy Best Practices
Two self-regulatory watchdog units of BBB National Programs, the Digital Advertising Accountability Program (DAAP) and the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU), today released the result of a new data privacy case for the children’s gaming site Girls Go Games and the mobile app My Dolphin Show.
Azerion, the publisher of Girls Go Games and My Dolphin Show, worked with DAAP and CARU to bring its online services into compliance with the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) Principles for privacy and interest-based advertising, and CARU’s Advertising Guidelines, respectively.
DAAP and CARU monitor the mobile app marketplace and the web, conducting network traffic tests of popular mobile apps and websites and opening formal inquiries where they find a gap in compliance with privacy best practices.
During that monitoring, DAAP and CARU discovered third parties collecting mobile device identifiers through My Dolphin Show, a mobile game that has more than fifty million downloads in the Google Play Store. DAAP and CARU also discovered that the Girls Go Games website, owned by the same company, contained third-party trackers collecting data for interest-based advertising.
Both the app and the website failed to obtain parental consent or screen users under the age of 13 for the third-party collection of that data.
DAAP and CARU opened a formal review and sent the company an inquiry letter addressing these issues. In response, Azerion, which had acquired the Girls Go Games and My Dolphin Show properties during the pendency of the joint review, worked quickly to meet the DAA and CARU interest-based advertising data privacy requirements.
The company fully addressed DAAP and CARU’s concerns by:
- Removing advertising entirely from the My Dolphin Show app
- Removing all third-party data collection for interest-based advertising from the Girls Go Games website, and disabling all data-sharing and remarketing with their advertising partners
- Engaging an outside auditor to review their practices and ensure compliance
- Updating its internal guidelines and practices
- Taking steps to ensure that only advertising that is appropriate for a child audience will be displayed
“On behalf of both teams here at BBB National Programs, I want to thank Azerion for adopting all of our recommendations, which required major revisions to the app and website at issue,” said Jon Brescia, Vice President, Digital Advertising Accountability Program, BBB National Programs. “As this case shows, self-regulation can get real results.”
DAAP and CARU have conducted other joint operations in the past, including a joint referral to the Federal Trade Commission in 2019.
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