TikTok faces a fine for an alleged children’s data misuse

The United Kingdom-based data watchdog fined TikTok nearly 13 million pounds, roughly $16 million, for an apparent collection of children’s data. Based on the report, the data contained children under 13 years old without parental supervision.

Moreover, the Information Commissioner’s Office estimated that it app-enabled more than 1.4 million UK minors to download and use the platform since 2020. The regulator accused the social media giant of failing to take the necessary actions to verify user identity and remove users that are under 13 years old from the platform.

 

The British data watchdog has followed the US actions in scrutinising TikTok over data privacy.

 

Britain’s data watchdog’s decision occurred ager TikTok faced massive global scrutiny in different countries, especially the United States. The countries’ concerns are mainly because of the platform’s ties with the Chinese government.

The US and UK regulators have suspended social media applications on government devices, which the government could permanently ban from all users in the United States.

Britain’s ICP has also accused the Chinese company of failing to properly inform its users on the platform about how their information was gathered by TikTok and used between 2018 and 2020. The ICO stated that the platform users could not make informed choices about whether and how a user could engage without illegally collected information.

The platform initially faced a $29 million fine, but the British regulators decided to downgrade it because of the findings about Tiktok’s processed and misused data.

The ICO commissioner explained that social media could allow children to learn and explore the digital world. However, apps and other platforms should employ proper data privacy protection.

Furthermore, organisations that develop digital services have a legal duty to enforce these protections on their apps. Unfortunately, TikTok did not meet the qualifying standards to protect such data.

TikTok denied the allegations as the platform admins claimed they keep under 13-year-old children from their social media and video-sharing platform.