A fine worth €345m (£296m) has been imposed on TikTok by the Irish data regulator for breaching EU data law regarding children's accounts. The video-sharing platform was found guilty of multiple violations of GDPR rules, which included failing to safeguard minors' content from public viewing.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) found that TikTok had violated GDPR regulations in multiple ways. Firstly, it automatically sets child users' accounts to the public without offering them any privacy options. Secondly, it failed to provide clear information to children regarding their privacy rights. Thirdly, it allowed adults to access children's accounts through the "family pairing" feature, which allowed direct messaging with users who were over 16.
Finally, TikTok did not properly consider the risks faced by users under the age of 13 who had public settings. The DPC also discovered that users aged 13 to 17 were taken through the sign-up process in a manner that automatically set their accounts to the public. Moreover, the "family pairing" feature did not confirm whether the adult was the child's parent or guardian.
The DPC ruled that TikTok, which has a minimum user age of 13,
did not properly take into account the risk posed to underage users who gained
access to the platform. It said the public-setting-by-default process allowed
anyone to “view social media content posted by those users”.
An investigation was conducted by TikTok to evaluate their privacy measures between July 31 and December 31, 2020. The inquiry revealed some concerns, which TikTok claims to have addressed. Since 2021, all TikTok accounts belonging to 13- to 15-year-olds, irrespective of whether they are new or existing, have been set to private by default. This implies that only people approved by the user can access their content.
TikTok disputes the decision and the amount of the fine imposed. They believe that the criticisms raised by the DPC mainly revolved around features and settings that were already in place three years ago. TikTok had made changes to these features well before the investigation even began, such as setting all under-16 accounts to private by default.
By: Kanto Okanta
