ICO Fines TikTok £12.7m for Misusing Children's Data

In the UK, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued a £12.7m fine to short-form video hosting service TikTok for a number of breaches of data protection law, including failing to use children's personal data lawfully.

The ICO estimates that TikTok allowed up to 1.4 million UK children under 13 to use its platform in 2020, despite its own rules not allowing children that age to create an account. UK data protection law says that organisations that use personal data when offering information society services to underage children must have consent from their parents or carers, and TikTok failed to do that. The ICO investigation found that a concern was raised internally with some senior employees about those children using the platform and not being removed, and in the ICO's view TikTok did not respond adequately.

Specifically, the ICO found that TikTok breached the UK General Data Protection Regulation between May 2018 and July 2020 by providing its services to UK children under the age of 13 and processing their personal data without consent or authorisation 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; and failing to ensure that the personal data belonging to its UK users was processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner.

UK Information Commissioner John Edwards (pictured) comments: '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'.

Web site: www.ico.org.uk .