TikTok fined £12.7m for UK data protection law breaches
TikTok has been fined £12.7m for multiple breaches of data protection law, including using the personal data of children aged under 13 without parental consent, Britain’s data watchdog has said.
The Chinese-owned video app had not done enough to check who was using the platform and remove underage children, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said on Tuesday.
The failure to enforce age limits led to “up to 1.4 million UK children” under the age of 13 using the platform as of 2020, the ICO estimated, even though the company’s own rules banned the practice. UK data protection law does not have a strict ban on children using the internet, but requires organisations that use the personal data of children to obtain consent from their parents or carers.
In a statement, the information commissioner, John Edwards, said: “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.
“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.”
“TikTok should have known better,” Edwards added. “TikTok should have done better. Our £12.7m 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 ICO’s investigation found that concern was raised internally but that TikTok did not respond “adequately”.
In a statement, a TikTok
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