SAN FRANCISCO — Yelp Inc. said Tuesday that it has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle claims brought by the Federal Trade Commission over the company’s collection of personal information from children under the age of 13 who used its mobile app.
According to a complaint filed Tuesday in San Francisco federal court, from 2009 to 2013 both the iOS and Android versions of the Yelp app illegally accepted registrations from users whose birth dates indicated they were under age 13. The FTC claimed that a youngster who created a Yelp account through the mobile app could add information to their personal profiles such as photos and their hometown. The customer-review company also collected Global Positioning Systems data of users who chose to allow Yelp to use their location, according to the complaint.
