TikTok was fined 345 million euros ($370 million) for violating EU privacy legislation pertaining to the processing of children’s personal data.
According to a statement by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, the Chinese-owned short-video platform violated several EU privacy regulations between July 31, 2020, and December 31, 2020. The platform is popular among teens worldwide and is controlled by China.
ByteDance-owned TikTok is the first company to have received a reprimand from the DPC, the primary EU regulator for many of the top tech companies.
A representative for TikTok stated that the company disagreed with the verdict, especially the severity of the fine, and that the majority of the criticisms are no longer valid due to the remedies it implemented before the DPC’s investigation got underway in September 2021.
By default, accounts for users under the age of 16 were set to “public” in 2020, according to the DPC, and TikTok failed to confirm that a user was indeed a minor user’s parent or guardian when linked through the “family pairing” option.
Family pairing now has stricter parental controls thanks to TikTok, which also altered the default option for all logged-in users under the age of 16 to “private” in January 2021.
The DPC granted TikTok three months to bring all of its processing into compliance when violations were discovered.
