Epic Games to pay over $500m in Fortnite refunds & privacy violation penalty after FTC fine Epic GamesFortnite creator Epic Games has agreed to pay $520m to settle the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s allegations that it had violated a children\u2019s privacy law and used certain tricks to get millions of players to make unintentional purchases. The FTC\u2019s action against Epic Games involves two separate record-breaking settlements. As part of a proposed federal court order filed by the Department of Justice, Epic will pay a $275 million monetary penalty for violating the COPPA Rule \u2014 the largest penalty ever obtained for violating an FTC rule, according to the Commission. Additionally, Epic will be required to adopt strong privacy default settings for children and teens, ensuring that voice and text communications are turned off by default, in a first-of-its-kind ruling. As noted in Epic\u2019s newsroom post, Fortnite settings default to the highest privacy option for players under the age of 18, including voice and text chat defaulting to \u201cNobody.\u201d Under a separate order, Epic will pay $245 million to refund consumers for its billing practices. This is the FTC\u2019s largest refund amount in a gaming case and its largest administrative order in history. \u201cAs our complaints note, Epic used privacy-invasive default settings and deceptive interfaces that tricked Fortnite users, including teenagers and children,\u201d said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. \u201cProtecting the public, and especially children, from online privacy invasions and dark patterns is a top priority for the Commission, and these enforcement actions make clear to businesses that the FTC is cracking down on these unlawful practices.\u201d \u201cThe Justice Department takes very seriously its mission to protect consumers\u2019 data privacy rights,\u201d said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. \u201cThis proposed order sends a message to all online providers that collecting children\u2019s personal information without parental consent will not be tolerated.\u201d According to the order, Fortnite used illegal \u201cdark patterns\u201d to trick players into making unwanted purchases and let children rack up unauthorized charges without any parental involvement. The Commission voted 4-0 to issue the proposed administrative complaint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Epic Games to pay over $500m in Fortnite refunds & privacy violation penalty after FTC fine Epic GamesFortnite creator Epic Games has agreed to pay $520m to settle the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s allegations that it had violated a children\u2019s privacy law and used certain tricks to get millions of players to make unintentional purchases. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}