Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office announced on Tuesday that it has fined TikTok 12.7 million pounds ($15.88 million) for multiple breaches of data protection law, including using personal data of children under 13 without parental consent.
The office stated that the video clips application, owned by the Chinese company, “ByteDance”, did not take sufficient measures to verify the identity of the platform’s users and delete users who are underage children.
Earlier, the Office of the Information Commissioner in Britain concluded that the video-sharing platform may have dealt with the data of children under the age of 13 without the consent of their parents, nor did it provide the appropriate information to its users in a concise, transparent and easy-to-understand manner.
The office said the breach occurred over a period of more than two years, up to July 2020.
In its reaction, TikTok said that it objects to the results of the investigation.
Underage
According to the investigation, TikTok allowed about 1.4 million children in Britain to use the application, even though they were under the legal age in Britain, i.e. thirteen years.
TikTok is used by 44% of children aged between eight and 12 in Britain, according to Ofcom, the government’s communications oversight office, despite the platform’s policies banning use by those under the age of 13.
UK data protection law requires parental consent to use any personal data relating to children under the age of 13.
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Enhance privacy
For its part, TikTok launched a number of features to enhance privacy and security on the site, including allowing parents to link their accounts to their children, and disabling direct messaging for those under the age of 16.
The Children’s Act, introduced in September last year, sets new rules of practice for data protection for online services that children are likely to access, building on existing data protection laws, with financial penalties for potential serious breaches.
Standard fine
And in 2019, the Federal Trade Commission fined the company a record $5.7 million for mishandling children’s data.
The platform was also fined in South Korea for similar reasons.
In July, the US Senate Commerce Committee voted to approve a measure that would raise the age for children to be given special online privacy protections to 16, and ban ads directed at children without consent.
