The social network TikTok was fined 345 million euros by European authorities for failing to protect children’s privacy, with the company “respectfully” disagreeing with the decision and the “amount of the fine”.
The Data Protection Commission (DPC), based in Ireland, announced the fine and reprimanded the platform for the violations, which date back to the second half of 2020.
For example, this study found that the registration process for teen users on TikTok had resulted in settings making their accounts public by default, allowing anyone to view and comment on their videos.
These default settings also posed a risk to children under the age of 13 who were allowed to access the platform even though they were not allowed.
In a statement released Friday, TikTok said it disagreed with this decision. “We respectfully disagree with several aspects of the decision, in particular the amount of the fine,” he emphasized, noting that he will evaluate next steps.
According to the social network, “the DPC’s investigation focused exclusively on the period from July to December 2020” and “most of the criticisms in the decision” are no longer relevant “as a result of the measures” it introduced at the beginning of this year. 2021.
“We believe that platform settings have always given users control over choosing a public or private account, but in January 2021 (eight months before the DPC launched its investigation) we became the first major platform to disable all existing and new accounts for Young people aged 13 to 15 years are private by default,” he assured, while also reporting on other measures he has taken to strengthen the privacy of young people.
TikTok also made sure that family sync worked, including greater transparency of rules for younger users.
Ireland’s regulator has been criticized for not being quick enough in its investigations into big tech companies since EU privacy law came into force in 2018. In the case of TikTok, German and Italian regulators disagreed over parts of a draft decision issued a year ago. delaying it even further, the Associated Press (AP) recalled.
Meanwhile, the Irish body also investigated TikTok’s measures to verify that users are at least 13 years old, but concluded that they did not break 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 data to China, where its owner, ByteDance, is based.
TikTok has been accused of posing a security risk due to fears that users’ sensitive information could end up in China. To respond to these concerns, the company launched a project to localize European user data: this month it opened a data center in Dublin, the first of three on the continent.
Source: DN
