TikTok Fined 3.45 Billion Euros for Violating EU Privacy Law on Children's Data Handling

The European regulators announced that TikTok, the popular video-sharing app, has been fined 3.45 billion euros (approximately 4.06 billion USD) for violating the EU privacy law on how to handle children’s personal data. The regulators said that TikTok failed to protect the rights and interests of children under 13 years old, who could be exposed to risky content and unwanted interactions on the app.

The investigation found that TikTok set the accounts of underage users to "public" by default when they registered, allowing anyone to watch and comment on their videos. Moreover, TikTok did not verify whether the users who linked their accounts through "family pairing" were the parents or guardians of the children.

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) said that TikTok breached several provisions of the EU privacy law between July 31 and December 31, 2020.

A spokesperson for TikTok said that it disagreed with the decision, especially the amount of the fine, and that most of the allegations were no longer applicable since TikTok had taken measures before the DPC investigation started in September 2021.

TikTok noted that it had introduced stricter parental controls for family pairing in November 2020 and changed the default settings to "private" for all users under 16 in January 2021.

TikTok also said that it planned to further update its privacy materials to make the difference between public and private accounts more clear, and that new users aged 16-17 would be defaulted to private accounts when they signed up for the app.