Europe Imposes $370M Fine on TikTok for Violating Children's Privacy
The European Commission has taken a tough stance against tech giant TikTok by imposing a record $370 million fine for violating children's privacy. The move comes after the company collected the personal data of users under the age of 16 without their parents' consent. The fine marks the largest enforcement action ever taken against a social media company by the European Union. It sets a strong precedent for future companies looking to break data protection rules.
TikTok, the popular social media platform, is facing a €345 million ($370 million) fine from the Irish Data Protection Commission for violating Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The fine is related to TikTok's handling of sensitive data from children aged 13 to 17, as well as data from children under 13 to determine their eligibility to use the app.
The investigation focused on TikTok's default privacy settings, "Family Pairing" feature, age verification process, and transparency with young users about their privacy settings. The regulator found that TikTok violated several articles of the GDPR, including those related to processing young users' data and using "dark patterns" to manipulate user actions. In addition to the fine, TikTok is required to make its data processing compliant by the end of the year.
This is the largest penalty TikTok has received from regulators, but it is not the company's first privacy-related fine. Earlier this year, the British data watchdog fined TikTok €12.7 million ($16 million) for similar violations, and in 2021, Dutch authorities issued a €750,000 fine (almost $1 million). TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, posted $80 billion in revenue in 2022.
