TikTok fined $15.9M by UK watchdog over misuse of kids' data
LONDON — Britain’s privacy watchdog reach TikTok with a multimillion-dollar fine Tuesday for misusing children's data and violating other measures for users' personal information.
The Information Commissioner's Office said it issued a fine of 12.7 million pounds ($15.9 million) to the short-video sharing app, which is largely popular among young people.
It's the latest example of tighter scrutiny that TikTok and its parent, Chinese technology company ByteDance, are facing in the West, where governments are increasingly worried about risks that the app has data privacy and cybersecurity.
The British watchdog, which was checking data breaches between May 2018 and July 2020, said TikTok permitted as many as 1.4 million children in the U.K. under 13 to use the app in 2020, rather than the platform's own rules stopping children that young from setting up accounts.
TikTok didn't properly check and remove children under 13 from the platform, the watchdog said. And even though it knew younger children were using the app, TikTok failed to get a declaration from their parents to process their data, as needed by Britain's data protection laws, the agency said.
“There are laws in place to make sure our children are 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.
TikTok collected and used the personal data of children who were improperly given access to the app, he said.
“That means that their data may have been used to track them and profile them, potentially delivering harmful, inappropriate content at their very next scroll,” Edwards said.
The company said it disagreed with the watchdog’s decision.
“We invest heavily to help keep under 13s off the platform and our 40,000-strong safety team works around the clock to help keep the platform safe for our community,” TikTok said in a statement. “We will continue to review the decision and are considering the next steps.”
TikTok says it has a better sign-up system since the breaches happened by no longer allowing users to simply declare they are old enough and look for other marks that an account is used by someone under 13.