TikTok's struggles amidst government scrutiny and legal action continue as the short video sharing platform faces a £27 million (around $29.2 million) fine in the United Kingdom after the U.K. Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found that the company may have violated data protection laws by failing to protect children's privacy between May 2018 and July 2020.
Charges claimed TikTok may have handled the data of kids under the age of 13 without parental consent, managed "special category" data, such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, or health, without legal basis, and did not provide necessary information to users in a "concise, transparent and easily understood" manner, Engadget reported.
UK Probe Began After FTC Fine For Child Privacy Violations
ICO began investigating TikTok in February 2019, soon after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission fined TikTok $5.7 million over reported child privacy violations. At the time, the UK ICO was concerned about both TikTok's "completely open" direct messaging And the platform's transparency tools. Sexual offenders were discovered messaging users as young as eight years old, and it was found that it was easy for kids to bypass the app's age wall.
ICO noted that these were merely preliminary findings and that it has not made any definitive conclusion that TikTok indeed broke the law or should pay a fine. ICO added it would "carefully consider" TikTok's side before handing down a final decision.
TikTok currently faces mounting pressure to safeguard kids, who account for a large majority of its users. In the U.S., members of Congress and state attorneys general are investigating TikTok over possible damages to child users, which includes attempts to keep them using the app for long periods. A UK fine may not be the last of the company's troubles until authorities are given proof that the platform is keeping underage users safe.
TikTok Exec Grilled Over Alleged US User Data Handover to Beijing
TikTok also faces scrutiny on the national security front, with U.S. lawmakers grilling a top TikTok executive over allegations its parent Chinese conglomerate ByteDance was sharing data of U.S. users with the Chinese communist government.
US senators repeatedly questioned TikTok Chief Operating Officer Vanessa Pappas at a national security hearing if the company could yield to Beijing in providing data about U.S. users or deleting content at the Chinese government's request.
Pappas insisted that TikTok would not yield to any demands or requests, if any, from the Chinese government for any information about its users. Pappas also emphasized that TikTok has never shared or transferred data to the Chinese Communist Party. She noted that TikTok is not headquartered in China since it does not have any headquarters at all.
While admitting that TikTok has employees who work in China, Pappas emphasized that the company also has strict access controls on the user data the company can access and where that data is stored. Data on U.S. users, she said, is stored securely in the United States. Pappas pointed out that they would not share such data to any government entity in China.
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