Badabing! is a new app that goes through people’s friends’ photos on Facebook to pull out the ones of them at the pool, beach, or when they are scantily clad.
The app is $1.99 and all person has to do to get it is to log in with a Facebook account and then choose a few friends to dig up some photos. The company seems to have image recognition technology that looks for skin to pick out the photos where the friends are wearing revealing clothing.
Once the pictures have been found by Badabing!, users can then look through the photos to share the sexy pictures with others.
According to Opposing Views, the Badabing! creators plan a web-based app which would let users to login through a website rather than an Apple product to search their Facebook friends’ photo galleries.
A spokesman for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection agency warned that the Badabing! app could aid pedophiles in looking for photos of under-dressed young people, which the minors have put on the Internet. The app raises issues on privacy. People who sign up for Facebook are warned of the risks in information online, including posting pictures, on Facebook galleries, whether with or without showing skin.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) applies to online personal data collection from children under 13 and requires a web site operator to get parental consent before collecting such information. When a child’s information is collected improperly, there can be identity theft, consumer violations, and other information misuse. COPPA requires parents or guardians be notified of a web site operator’s information practices. The operator can use its website, or a notice delivered directly to a parent or guardian whose child wants to register on the web site.
Besides Internet usage, the violation of a child’s privacy can happen with mobile applications. In August 2011, the FTC settled its first case involving children’s mobile applications. The FTC charged a game manufacturer, W3 Innovations, LLC, and its owner with violating COPPA by illegally collecting and disclosing personal information about thousands of children under age 13 without parents’ consent when they used applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.
In the past, the FTC proposed changing the definition of personal information to include geolocation data and certain persistent identifiers such as tracking cookies for behavioral advertising. The FTC also previously proposed modifying the definition of collection so website operators may allow children to enter interactive communities, without parental consent, as long as web site operators used measures to delete children’s personal information from a child’s postings before they made public.