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A recent study showed that many free apps designed for children collect and share information that violates federal privacy law.The study examined 5,855 of the most popular free children’s apps in the Google Play Store and was conducted earlier this year by researchers at the University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of California Berkeley, Stony Brook University, IMDEA Networks and International Computer Science Institute.Researchers touted the project as the first study to monitor actual program behavior in real time and at scale. Of the 5,855 apps they tested, researchers found that:- 256 of them collected information sufficient to figure out one’s location- 107 of the shared the device owner’s email address- 1,100 of them sent persistent identifiers to third parties whose terms of service explicitly state it should not receive data from children’s appsThe researchers chose to test Android apps because the operating system is open source, and the source code for iOS apps is not accessible.Researchers said a majority of the apps they tested are potentially in violation of COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule.Dr. Eric Cole, author of Online Danger and founder of Secure Anchor Consulting, said the results do not surprise him. He said if law enforcement goes after some of these companies, they are likely to shut down and start a new company.“A lot of these folks know they’re breaking the law, but they’re making $80,000-$100,000 over a few months, so they’re going to do it and they sort of stay one step ahead of enforcement,” Cole said.Cole added that it’s very hard to enforce different child safety laws because there are a lot of apps in the marketplace and they change quickly. He said without a detailed study, it’s hard to know what personal information the apps are collecting.In response to questions about certain companies named by the study, a member of the Federal Trade Commission’s Office of Public Affairs, Juliana Gruenwald Henderson, told CNN, “We vigorously enforce COPPA and have brought nearly 30 enforcement actions and obtained more than $10 million in civil penalties against companies for violation of the COPPA rule since it was enacted. FTC investigations are nonpublic, so we can’t comment on whether we haven an open investigation on any particular company.”Cole said the good news is that none of the apps in the study are tracking information secretly. He offered the following advice for parents:1. Go to your phone settings. Turn off location services for any apps that you don't want to track your location.2. Buy the paid version of the app. A free app can make money by taking personal information to create targeted ads. While a paid app could presumably still do the same thing, it is already making money from your purchase.3. Let your child play on the device in “airplane mode.” Sticking to games local to the device, or playing in airplane mode, prevents information from being transmitted.4. Stick with well-known developers with apps that have high ratings and a high number of downloads.Cole said child predators are “putting out games, they’re tracking your child’s location, but instead of pushing them to a toy store, they’re going to try to abduct your children or cause harm. So, this is a much bigger problem than what the study really highlights.”