Yelp has agreed to settle $450,000 to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after the agency charged the company of violating the rules of the Children Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), PC World reported.
Yelp, a company that connects consumers to local businesses, received a complaint from the FTC on Tuesday regarding its violation.
According to the U.S. agency, the company introduced a registration procedure through its app for iOS and Android devices. However, the company failed to install a feature that prohibits users under 13 years old from registering.
Due to the problem, the Yelp's app was able to collect information from registrants even those who indicated in their birth dates that they are below the age of 13. The problem was only detected in April of last year, according to The Recorder.
In addition, the company failed to notify parents about the issue.
According to the company, less than one percent of the users who registered are below the age limit based on the birth date information they provided.
"The good news is that only 0.02% of users who actually completed Yelp's registration process during this time period provided an underage birth date, and we have good reason to believe that many of them were actually adults," Yelp said through its official blog.
"Regardless, we don't want any ambiguity when it comes to our users," the company added. "When this problem was brought to our attention, we fixed it immediately and closed the affected users' accounts."
As part of the company's settlement deal with the FTC, Yelp has agreed to delete the information collected from underage users who registered through the app.
"Yelp doesn't promote itself as a place for children, and we certainly don't expect or encourage them to write reviews about their plumbers, dentists, or latest gastronomic discoveries," the company wrote.
"We're glad to have been able to cooperate with the FTC to get to a quick resolution and look forward to continuing our efforts to protect our users," Yelp continued.