The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced it will be scrutinising how popular mobile games played by UK children are protecting their online privacy.

With around 90% of UK children playing games on digital devices, it will launch a monitoring programme targeting 10 popular mobile games.

The review will assess the games’ compliance with default privacy settings, their geolocation controls, and their targeted advertising practices. It will also consider any other privacy issues identified during the review process.

The ICO says that 84% of parents are concerned about their children’s potential exposure to strangers or harmful content through mobile games, including half (50%) who are ‘very concerned’.

Three in four parents also say they are concerned about their children sharing personal data (76%) and data collection by game companies to serve ads (75%).

Meanwhile, 30% say their children have stopped using a mobile game because they – the parent/carer or child – were concerned about the data the game collected, or how the information was used.

The ICO’s focus on mobile games follows significant progress in improving children’s privacy standards across social media and video-sharing platforms through the ICO’s Children’s code strategy.

The ICO’s previous interventions resulted in social media and video sharing platforms making changes to improve their data protection practices. These changes have already reached over three million children, with the potential to improve online privacy for up to 11.7 million children in the UK.

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“Children’s online experiences are shaped not just by social media and video sharing platforms, but also by the games they play,” John Edwards, UK Information Commissioner, said.

“Our early review suggests that many mobile games’ design features can be especially intrusive, raising important questions about how these games are designed and experienced, and their adherence to the ICO’s Children’s code standards.

“We’re expanding our strategy to ensure that mobile games meet the same high standards of data protection we’ve driven across other platforms.”