FTC claims that Sendit App Anonymous has deceived children and collected their data illegally

The Federal Trade Committee (FTC) presented complaint Against Sendit, an unknown question application has become common for Gen Z and Youngler, to collect children’s data illegally, deceive users about who sent messages, and deceiving users to buy membership.

On Sendit, users – most of whom are adolescents – can send anonymous questions through Instagram, Tiktok or Snapchat. Several applications have appeared over the years, including Yulo and LMKWhich was suspended on Snapchat in 2021 due to a lawsuit for a child’s suicide. After this comment, I gained the sending quickly 3.5 million downloadWhen users flocked to the app to replace those that are no longer available.

By the following year, techcrunch Reporting I found that the applications of the most newest source, such as Sendit and LMKThey were misleading users with fake messages, then submitting purchases inside the application to detect who sent messages.

This report was echoed in FTC’s complaint, which stated that Sendit sent users false and provocative messages (such as “Are you going to have with me before?” Or “Have you done drugs?”).

If a user wants to find out who sent a message, he can spend $ 9.99 for “diamond membership”, but FTC claims that it was not clear that this was a repeated weekly payment, not one time cost. If the user reveals the “identity” behind a message already provided by Sendit, they will be given wrong information.

FTC also accused the data for users under the age of 13 without the approval of the parents, which is illegal below Coppa (The online privacy protection law). In particular, FTC was martyred as 2022 when more than 116,000 users reported that they were less than 13 years old, but sending the distinctive hearts to parents did not notify parents that they collected this data, and did not ask for permission.

In the same year, Techcrunch found that Sendit users complained about the application store reviews that Sendit for Instagram App had requested downloads by marketing himself as “Sendit”, which is an application “reveals” who sent them unknown messages.

At that time, when Techcrunch, founder of Sendit Hunter Rice, asked about these dark patterns, suggested that we are looking for Clickbait.

“There are a lot of great things about what we are doing is worthy of interest,” Rice, Rice Teccrunch said In 2022.

sender He also filed a lawsuit against a competitor, NGLIn 2022, he said that she stole the idea of ​​fake and unknown questions and other commercial secrets. It was ngl She later forced to end the practice In order to stay in the application store, after Techcrunch reports.