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The Justice Department last week fined a Chinese toymaker charged with illegally obtaining data on American children from its robotic toys.
In a stipulated order together with the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department said it resolved allegations of illegal privacy violations of American kids by China-based toymaker Apitor Technology Co. Ltd.
The toymaker was accused of violating the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act through its programmable toy robots.
The law prohibits online services from collecting, using or disclosing personal information from children under age 13, unless parents give their consent.
“The Justice Department will vigorously work to ensure businesses respect parents’ rights to decide when their children’s personal information can be collected and used,” said Brett A. Shumate, assistant attorney general of the Civil Division. “We will continue to work with the FTC to stop unlawful intrusions on children’s privacy.”
A civil complaint filed last month in federal court in San Francisco stated that Apitor uses an app to operate toys that move and through the Android app secretly collects geolocation data on children under age 13.
“Ultimately, defendant’s surreptitious collection of underage users’ geolocation information causes injury by compromising sensitive personal information of children,” the complaint said, noting the failure under law to obtain parental consent.
The court order requires Apitor to stop collecting data on children without first directly notifying parents and obtaining consent. It also imposed a $500,000 civil penalty, but the fine was suspended because the company said it could not pay, the Justice Department said in a statement.
The stipulation agreement says Apitor neither admits nor denies the allegations in the complaint. It directs the company to delete all personal information obtained from children.
Spokesmen for Apitor and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
China, in the past several decades, has been collecting masses of data on Americans stolen from government and private sector networks. Analysts believe the data is part of the Chinese government’s efforts to develop artificial intelligence for spying or information warfare purposes.
Apitor is the international brand name of Shenzhen Zhihou Technology Co., Ltd., a Shenzhen-based company founded in 2019. The company sells educational robots, building-block kits and smart toys.
While Apitor markets itself internationally as an education company and toy manufacturer, its parent entity, Shenzhen Zhihou, has extensive links to security and ideological education projects in China, according to China specialist L.J. Eads.
The company works with Chinese security services through interactive training. “These include immersive public security, civil air defense, traffic safety, anti-drug, and ‘Future Police School’ security education centers, often inaugurated with the participation of local Public Security Bureaus and senior officials from the Zhejiang Provincial Public Security Department,” said L.J.. Eads, head of the research firm Data Abyss.
Many projects explicitly integrate “party-building culture” and ideological messaging alongside safety instruction, he said.
Mr. Eads said Apitor functions as an extension of CCP civic indoctrination efforts, especially targeting youth by embedding Party and police narratives in its educational products.
“Internationally, the Apitor brand may appear neutral, but its corporate parent’s domestic role in CCP-driven campaigns creates reputational risk if foreign partners, schools, or governments adopt Apitor products unaware of this dual alignment,” he said.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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