SendIt is sued by the FTC for collecting children data

Let’ me make this clear. This is an application that supposedly has tons of users, but has now been sued by the FTC for practices which could be questionable.

Let’s step through this and you tell me what you think.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Sendit’s operating company and its CEO for unlawful collection of data from underage users, as well as deceptive subscription practices.

The FTC referred a legal complaint to the Department of Justice against Iconic Hearts Holdings Inc., the creator of Sendit, and its CEO, Hunter Rice.

Sendit is an “icebreaker” social media companion app popular among teenagers, that allows users to share a prompt in their Snapchat and Instagram stories, and collect anonymous responses from friends and followers.

The article continues:

It is very popular among teens, with more than five million downloads on Google Play and 1.5 million ratings on Apple App Store. The developer claims a userbase of 25 million.

According to FTC’s investigation, Sendit in 2022 had 116,000 registered users under the age of 13 from the United States.

The following are only alligations at this point, and the courts must decide what happens to the parent company.

The following, is aledged, based on the investigation.

First,

Sendit violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rules by collecting personal data of children under 13, including phone numbers, birthdates, photos, and social media usernames, without notifying parents or obtaining their consent.

MENVI does this by having a specific page which must be read prior to applications being sent, due to the nature of information that we collect. This was done after seeing people under 18 signing up with no parent, and confirming with we were following this important law here in the U.S. The matter is, that there are other versions of this law in other countries and they may be similar.

The second item in the list states:

Sendit deceived users by generating fake anonymous messages, some purposefully provocative and sexual, misrepresenting their origin as if they came from friends or contacts.

Did the app say that this was adult oriented? Since i’ve never heard of it, I’m not going to say one way or another, but this could be a huge alligation if found to be true. Ouch!

Third,

Sendit misled consumers into buying the premium “Diamond Membership” by falsely promising it would reveal the identity of senders, but providing instead generic, false, or no information at all.

Finally,

Sendit failed to clearly disclose billing terms for the Diamond Membership, automatically charging up to $9.99 a week instead of a one-time fee.

That’s definitely a violation, as billing rules are very clear on what you can and can’t do. The next paragraph under the list says:

These deceptive practices and recurring charges constitute violations of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA), the agency says.

Bleeping Computer has contacted the company for comment and has not received a response as of publishing time. Finally,

The FTC, which voted 3-0 in favor of referring the complaint to the U.S. DoJ, noted that the above violations are merely allegations against Sendit at this stage and the decision remains to the court.

While we’ve highlighted this article and put it in to thought form, maybe parents want to read the whole thing. I’m going to provide this ability, right now.

The article is titled Sendit sued by the FTC for illegal collection of children data and I urge U,.S. parents to read this. It may affect your child.

I probably won’t be surprised if other countries find out about this and find their data is in this either.

Other information and resources if you wish

• There also is a Tech Crunch article on this too, and when searching for Sendit, you’ll find links to the app using Duck Duck Go.
• Here is the FTC link as well.
• Here is their web site