UK fines TikTok $15.9m over misuse of children’s data
Watchdog says TikTok has not obtained parental consent to process the data, as required by UK data protection law.
The British privacy watchdog hit TikTok with a multi-million dollar fine for misusing children’s data and violating other protections for young users’ personal information.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said on Tuesday it has imposed a £12.7m ($15.9m) fine on the short video-sharing app, which is wildly popular with young people.
It’s the latest example of tighter scrutiny facing TikTok and its parent company, Chinese tech company ByteDance, in the West, where governments are increasingly concerned about the risks the app poses to data privacy and cybersecurity.
The UK watchdog, which investigated data breaches between May 2018 and July 2020, said TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children under the age of 13 in the UK to use the app in 2020, despite the platform’s own rules those kids being so young ban bills on.
TikTok insufficiently identified and removed children under the age of 13 from the platform, the watchdog said. And while it knew younger children were using the app, TikTok did not get their parents’ consent to process their data, as required by UK data protection law, the agency said.
“There are laws to make sure our children are just as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws,” Information Commissioner John Edwards said in a press release.
The social media company collected and used the personal data of children who improperly accessed the app, he said.
“That means their data may have been used to track and profile them, delivering potentially harmful, inappropriate content on their next scroll,” said Edwards.
The company said it disagreed with the watchdog’s decision.
“We invest heavily to keep children under 13 off the platform and our 40,000-strong security team works around the clock to keep the platform safe for our community,” TikTok said in a statement.
“We will continue to evaluate the decision and consider next steps,” the statement said.
TIkTok says it has improved its login system since the breaches occurred by no longer allowing users to simply declare that they are old enough and it is looking for other signs that an account is being used by someone under 13.
The fine also included other breaches of UK data privacy law.
The watchdog said TikTok failed to properly inform people about how their data is collected, used and shared in an understandable way. Without this information, young users are unlikely to be able to “make informed choices” about whether or not to use TikTok, the company said.
TikTok also failed to ensure that UK users’ personal data was processed lawfully, fairly and transparently, the regulator said.
The social media company was initially fined £27 million ($33.7 million), which was reduced after the company persuaded regulators to drop other charges.
US regulators fined TikTok — formerly known as Musical.ly — $5.7 million in 2019 in a case involving similar allegations of unlawful collection of children’s personal information.
Also on Tuesday, Australia became the latest country to ban TikTok from its government devices, with authorities from the European Union to the United States concerned that the app could share data with the Chinese government or push pro-Beijing stories.
US lawmakers are also considering forcing a sale or even banning TikTok entirely as tensions with China mount.