A recent story was revealed about Brightest Flashlight Free smartphone/tablet app in which the app collected information without the user's consent. The FTC chose not to seek a fine as a penalty despite the app having some 50 million downloads and an undisclosed amount of revenue generated from the privacy violations. Apparently an agreement was reached where the punishment would be that the app must now display a prominent message about what is collected from the user. In your opinion what would have been an appropriate penalty for this app's violation of user privacy? Some of the options in this poll overlap (ex. FTC penalty of fine plus app store penalty of permanent ban) Story here - http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ftc-flashlight-app-left-consumers-dark-21111817 EDIT - let's assume the hypothetical fine would be $10,000. If you believe it should be more or less please state what amount you think it should be. Thanks
Beyond whatever the FTC or FCC fines them, they should forfeit all income from the sale of that location data, plus an equal percentage to be returned to each user who installed it. If they don't make the penalty hurt, there's no incentive to do anything different the next time.
They should just insert it to EULA clearly like Google does all privacy violations, 99% would ignore it anyway.
Reason they gave for no fine was because the app was free? That is not setting a good precedent there.
I am for companies and their personnel suffering for illegalities. I strongly favor imprisonment and or fines for all those in the know and or benefitted. Especially the owners, CEO, CTO and management. Maybe I'm too old but that's the USA I like to remember. I count my blessings that I am a U.S. citizen.
A $100 fine times the number of users violated. I think a $100 fine for violating someones privacy is not high. If you do it on a massive scale, the fine gets massive as well, but that's their problem. I wonder what the NSA would have to pay if they were fined like this
