New York Times: Weight Watchers App Gathered Data From Children, F.T.C. Says

Ben Winters, a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the F.T.C. appeared to be applying a version of a legal doctrine known as “the fruit of the poisonous tree,” in which evidence is deemed inadmissible if it was obtained illegally. He said the commission had previously applied the doctrine when it fined Facebook about $5 billion for allowing Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm, to harvest personal information from its users.

“It’s a privacy case that was enforced using the only real privacy law we have — and it’s only for kids,” Mr. Winters said, referring to COPPA. “It’s interesting for the F.T.C. to use the poison-tree remedy in a more run-of-the-mill case, and that’s something we really want to be seeing.”

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