The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) fined Tik Tok with 14.5 million EUR for several breaches, including using children’s data without parental consent.
The UK data protection law states that no children under the age of 13 are allowed to create accounts on Tik Tok without parental consent. However, Tik Tok failed to review the created accounts and failed to implement any age verification mechanisms, even though it was obvious that, given the popularity of the app, many children would try to create accounts and upload content, despite their age.
Apart from providing its services to children under 13 without parental or tutor’s consent, Tik Tok has also failed to provide proper information to people using the platform about how their data is collected, used, and shared in a proper and easy way to comprehend. Moreover, the app failed to ensure that the personal data belonging to its users was used lawfully and in a transparent manner.
The original notice sent to Tik Tok set the fine at 31 million EUR, which also included the provisional finding related to unlawful use of special category data, meaning that in the future, Tik Tok could also be fined for the content uploaded by underage children and use of their data.
Written by: Briana Huști
