Negligent handling of data
Tiktok has to pay 345 million euros for data protection violations in the EU
Tiktok wants to take action against the punishment
© Roslan Rahman
The Chinese online service Tiktok has been fined heavily by the EU. The company is to pay 345 million euros because it handled data from children and young people too negligently.
The online service Tiktok has to pay a fine of 345 million euros for violations of European data protection law. The service, which is very popular with young people, has violated the law when it comes to handling the data of minors The EU General Data Protection Regulation was violated, the Irish Data Protection Commission DPC, which acts on behalf of the EU, said on Friday.
The Irish Data Protection Commission opened an investigation into the subsidiary of the Chinese company Bytedance in September 2021, looking at the period from summer to the end of 2020. She is responsible because Tiktok’s headquarters in Europe is in Ireland. The online service currently has more than 130 million users in the EU.
Problems with uploaded videos
In particular, the Tiktok profiles of minors and the videos they uploaded there were initially completely public by default, the data protection officers explained. Registration on the platform is actually only permitted for those aged 13 and over, but many younger people could still have created an account. According to the Irish authority, Tiktok did not sufficiently consider the risks to these children on its platform.
The “Family Connection” setting, which can be used to link a minor’s Tiktok account with that of a parent, also causes problems. However, Tiktok does not check whether the linked account actually belongs to a relative or guardian.
When asked by the AFP news agency, a spokesman for the company said that Tiktok did not agree with the penalty, particularly with the amount of the fine. Tiktok is checking how to proceed. The company also pointed out that the functions and settings in question had been changed since 2020. Since the beginning of this year, 17 million accounts have been deleted because they allegedly belonged to children under 13.
Several countries imposed penalties on Tiktok
In April, the British data protection authority ICO had already imposed a fine of 12.7 million pounds (14.78 million euros) against Tiktok. The authority accused Tiktok of allowing up to 1.4 million children under the age of 13 to register in 2020 and using their data without their parents’ permission.
In the Netherlands, Tiktok had to pay 750,000 euros in 2021 for data protection violations involving minors, and the USA imposed a fine of $5.7 million in 2019 following similar allegations.
Like many online companies, Tiktok is under increasing pressure due to data protection concerns in the EU. In this case, there are also fears that the Chinese authorities could have access to users’ data. Tiktok has therefore announced that it will store European user data in the EU in the future and opened its first data center in Dublin at the beginning of September.