TikTok fined $15.9M by U.Okay. watchdog over misuse of children’ knowledge

Britain’s privateness watchdog hit TikTok with a multimillion-dollar penalty on Tuesday for a slew of knowledge safety breaches, together with misusing youngsters’s knowledge.

The Information Commissioner’s Office stated it issued a high-quality of 12.7 million kilos ($15.9 million) to the short-video sharing app, which is wildly standard with younger individuals.

It’s the newest instance of tighter scrutiny that TikTok and its mother or father, Chinese know-how firm ByteDance, are going through within the West, the place governments are more and more involved about dangers that the app poses to knowledge privateness and cybersecurity.

The British watchdog stated TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million youngsters within the U.Okay. underneath 13 to make use of the app in 2020, regardless of the platform’s personal guidelines prohibiting youngsters that younger from organising accounts.

TikTok didn’t adequately determine and take away youngsters underneath 13 from the platform, the watchdog stated. And although it knew youthful youngsters have been utilizing its platform, TikTok did not get consent from their mother and father to course of their knowledge, as required by Britain’s knowledge safety legal guidelines, the company stated.

“TikTok should have known better. TikTok should have done better,“ Information Commissioner John Edwards said in a press release. The fine “reflects the serious impact their failures may have had. They did not do enough to check who was using their platform or take sufficient action to remove the underage children that were using their platform.”

The firm stated it disagreed with the watchdog’s determination.

“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 stated in assertion. “We will continue to review the decision and are considering next steps.”