The Federal Trade Committee (FTC) filed a complaint Against Sendit, an anonymous application of questions that became popular with Gen Z and the youngest, for the illegal collection of children’s data, deceiving users about who sent them messages and cheating users to buy entries.
In Sendit, users – who are mostly teenagers – can send each other anonymous questions through integration with Instagram, Tiktok or Snapchat. Several applications such as this have emerged over the years, including Yolo and LMK, which have been resurrected at Snapchat in 2021 due to a child’s suicide treatment. Following this suspension, Sendit quickly won 3.5 million downloads as users flock to the application to replace those that were no longer available.
Until the following year, TechCrunch Reporting found that newer anonymous question applications, such as Sendit and LMK, were misleading users with fake messages and then offering in -app purchases to reveal who sent the messages.
This report was repeated in the complaint of FTC, which said the mission sent users fake, provocative messages (such as “will you ever have with me?” Or “Have you made medicines?”).
If a user wanted to see who sent a message, they could spend $ 9.99 on a “diamond participation”, but FTC claims that it was not clear that this was a recurring weekly payment and not a one -off cost. If a user revealed the “identity” behind a message that was actually submitted by Sendit, they would be given false information.
FTC also accused the mission to collect data knowing the collection of users under 13 years of age without parental consent, which is illegal below Coppa (Children’s law on protecting children’s privacy). Specifically, the FTC set an example by 2022 when more than 116,000 users reported that they were under 13 years of age, but the sending of parental virtual hearts did not notify parents that it had collected this data, nor requested permission.
In the same year, TechCrunch found that Sendit users complained about the revisions of the App Store that the Sendit for Instagram app had called for marketing as “Sendit Reveal”, an application that would “reveal” to them anonymous messages.
At that time, when TechCrunch asked the founder of Sendit Hunter Rice for these dark motifs, he suggested that we were looking for clickbait.
“There are many great things for what we do that are worthy,” Rice told TechCrunch in 2022. “You are welcome to have fun with this issue, but I am only interested in talking about real news.”
Sendit also sued a competitor, NGL, in 2022, saying that he stole the idea of false, anonymous questions and other commercial secrets. NGL was later forced to end the practice to stay in the App Store after TechCrunch.
