Tiktok, a popular video-sharing app owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, has been fined a multimillion-dollar penalty for misusing children’s data.
Britain’s privacy watchdog slammed TikTok, on Tuesday, with a fine of $15.9 million after it accused the short-video sharing app of violating other protections for users’ personal information.
John Edwards, the Information Commissioner, who announced the fine, said that TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children in the UK under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite the platform’s rules prohibiting young children from setting up accounts.
“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,” Mr Edwards said in a statement.
TokTok was said to have failed to get consent from their parents to process their data, even though it knew the children were using the app, which is wildly popular with young people.
The British watchdog had been investigating data breaches between May 2018 and July 2020.
Although, It’s the latest example of tighter scrutiny that TikTok would be facing in the West – where governments are increasingly concerned about risks that the app poses to data privacy and cyber security.
Speaking further, Mr Edward said TikTok collected and used the personal data of children who were inappropriately given access to the app.
“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,” he noted.
But in its swift reaction, TikTok said it disagreed with the watchdog’s decision.
It added it would continue to review the decision while also considering the next steps.
“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 to clarify its position.
TikTok, however, said it had improved its sign-up system since the breaches happened by no longer allowing users to simply declare they are old enough and looking for other signs that an account is used by someone under 13.
The penalty also covered 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 easily understandable way.
“Without this information, it’s unlikely that young users would be able “to make informed choices” about whether and how to use TikTok,” it said.
TikTok initially faced a 27 million-pound fine, which was reduced after the company persuaded regulators to drop other charges.
The United States of America regulators in 2019 fined TikTok $5.7 million in a case that involved similar allegations of unlawful collection of children’s personal information.
