The social network TikTok was fined €345 million by European authorities for failing to protect children’s privacy, and the company “respectfully” disagreed with the decision and the “level of the fine.”
The Ireland-based Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced the fine and reprimanded the platform for the violations, which date back to the second half of 2020.
This investigation revealed, for example, that the registration process for teenage users on TikTok had resulted in settings that made their accounts public by default, allowing anyone to view and comment on their videos.
This default setting also posed a risk to children under 13 years of age accessing the platform, although this was not permitted.
In a statement released this Friday, TikTok said it did not agree with this decision. “We respectfully disagree with several aspects of the decision, particularly the level of the fine,” he said, noting that he will evaluate the next steps.
According to the social network, “the DPC investigation focused solely on the period from July to December 2020” and “most of the criticisms present in the decision” are no longer relevant “due to the measures” it introduced to early 2021.
“We believe that the platform’s setup has always allowed users to have control over choosing a public or private account, but in January 2021 (eight months before the DPC began its investigation), we became the first platform important in creating all new and existing accounts for Young people between 13 and 15 years old are private by default,” he said, also giving an account of other measures he has taken to reinforce the privacy of the youngest.
TikTok also ensured that family synchronization worked and that there was greater transparency of the rules for younger users, among other measures.
The Irish regulator has been criticized for not being fast enough in its investigations into big tech companies since EU privacy laws came into force in 2018. In the case of TikTok, German and Italian regulators disagreed on parts of a draft decision issued a year ago. delaying it even more, recalled the Associated Press (AP).
Meanwhile, the Irish body also examined TikTok’s measures to verify that users are at least 13 years old, but concluded that they did not violate any rules.
The regulator is also conducting a second investigation to determine whether TikTok complied with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation when it transferred users’ personal information to China, where its owner, ByteDance, is based.
TikTok has been accused of posing a security risk due to fears that sensitive user information could end up in China. To address these concerns, the company began a project to localize European user data: this month it opened a data center in Dublin, which will be the first of three on the continent.
Source: TSF
