Will take action if apps violate our policies: Google
San Francisco, April 18: Responding to a study that found nearly 60 percent of free Android apps used by children potentially violate a federal law, Google has said that it will take action if company's policies are violated.
"If we determine that an app violates our policies, we will take action. We always appreciate the research community's work to help make the Android ecosystem safer," technology news website Tom's Guide quoted a Google spokesperson as saying.
Google responded to a study by the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, that found 57 per cent of the 5,855 Android apps used by children and families are potentially in violation of a federal law designed to protect the privacy of kids under 13-years-old.
The report said that these apps could be illegally monitoring children's behaviour online.
The federal law, 1998's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), mandates privacy and consent requirements for website operators catering to children under 13.
"We are taking the researchers' report very seriously and looking into their findings. Protecting kids and families is a top priority and our Designed for Families programme requires developers to abide by specific requirements above and beyond our standard Google Play policies," the spokesperson added.
The study further found that 92 per cent of the 1,280 Android apps that utilise Facebook's application programming interface (API) are potentially in violation of COPPA.
The decision comes at a time when Facebook is embroiled in a scandal after reports that British data firm Cambridge Analytica had improperly gathered detailed Facebook information on 87 million users.
Last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before the US Congress over his company's handling of user data.
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MP: 7-year-old girl raped and murdered; minor relative detained
Barwani (MP), Jan 28 (PTI) Police on Wednesday detained a 17-year-old relative of a seven-year-old girl in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for allegedly raping her and killing her by throwing her into a canal, a police official said.
Superintendent of Police Jagdish Dawar told reporters that the body of the child was recovered from the Indira Sagar Canal on January 26, following information from residents of a village in the Rajpur police station area of the district.
He said the post-mortem report concluded severe injuries to the girl’s private parts and attributed her death to drowning.
Dawar said a 17-year-old boy, a close relative of the girl, has been detained in connection with the rape-murder.
The teenager told the police that he kidnapped the girl from her home on the night of January 25 while her family members were asleep, took her to a nearby canal and raped her, according to the official.
When the girl started screaming during the sexual assault, the minor boy allegedly threw her into the canal, with the intention of killing her. The child drowned in the water body, the official said.
The detained minor will be produced in a juvenile court.
A case has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and an investigation is underway, he added.
