TikTok, a Chinese-owned social media site, was fined €345 million ($369 million) on Friday (September 15) for child data breaches, the EU‘s latest salvo at the internet titans’ business practices.
The fine was imposed following the conclusion of a two-year investigation by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC).
TikTok has been given three months to “bring its processing into compliance” with the rigorous General Data Protection Regulations of the EU, according to the Irish watchdog.
In September 2021, the DPC began investigating TikTok’s GDPR compliance in terms of personal data processing and platform settings for users under the age of 18.
Irish data protection regulator criticizes TikTok’s handling of child accounts and privacy risks
It also evaluated TikTok’s verification processes for people under the age of 13, and while no violations were uncovered, it was established that the platform failed to adequately analyze the risks to younger people who had enrolled in the service.
In its judgment on Friday (September 15), the regulator emphasized how children’s TikTok accounts were set to public by default once they signed up, allowing anybody to view or comment on the content they submitted.
It also criticized TikTok’s “family pairing” option, which was meant to link the accounts of parents to those of their children; however, the DPC discovered that the firm failed to verify the parent or guardian’s status.
The European offices of TikTok, Google, Meta, and X are located in Dublin, Ireland, and have been at the center of the GDPR regulation.
TikTok says it’s’respectfully disagrees’
In response to the penalties, TikTok announced that it “respectfully disagrees” with the judgment and is “evaluating” its next steps.
“The DPC’s criticisms are focused on features and settings that were in place three years ago, and that we made changes to well before the investigation even began, such as setting all under 16 accounts to private by default,” said a TikTok spokesperson, while speaking to AFP.
The company indicated that it has been continuously monitoring its users’ ages and will take appropriate measures when necessary. TikTok reported that over 17 million accounts were terminated globally in the first three months of this year due to concerns that they were established by people under the age of 13.