TikTok has been fined £12.7M ($15.9M) by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for several breaches of children’s data protection law.
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John Edwards, the UK’s Information Commissioner, said the ByteDance-owned app “should have known better and should have done better,” stating that TikTok’s failures had had a “serious impact.”
An ICO investigation found that TikTok had breached UK data protection regulation between 2018 and 2020 by:
Providing its services to UK children under the age of 13 and processing their personal data without consent or authorization from their parents or carers. Failing to provide proper information to people using the platform about how their data is collected, used, and shared in a way that is easy to understand. Failing to ensure that the personal data belonging to its UK users was processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner.
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An initial finding had set the fine at more than double today’s figure but this was lowered “considering the representations from TikTok,” according to the ICO.
“There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws,” added Edwards.
“As a consequence, an estimated one million under 13s were inappropriately granted access to the platform, with TikTok collecting and using their personal data. That means that their data may have been used to track them and profile them, potentially delivering harmful, inappropriate content at their very next scroll.”
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The news comes with TikTok firmly in the spotlight. The app has been banned on government devices in the U.S., the UK and various other nations. The BBC, which was initially encouraging journalists to use TikTok, has now told staff to delete the app.
