TikTok fined for violating children's privacy rules

On September 15, Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined TikTok 345 million Euros for violating privacy regulations related to the processing of children's personal data in European Union (EU) member states.

DPC Ireland is the EU's main data protection body with the authority to initiate criminal proceedings against technology companies that violate the Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

This is the first time TikTok has received a penalty from the Irish DPC. (Source: AFP)

In a statement, DPC Ireland said that the short video sharing platform TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, had violated several EU privacy regulations between July 31, 2020, and December 31, 2020.

According to the agency, in 2020, TikTok accounts of members under 16 years old were set to public by default, meaning anyone could see the posts from these accounts.

Additionally, TikTok does not verify accounts that have enabled the "Family Pairing" feature – a feature that allows parents or guardians to link their accounts to their children's accounts for management and supervision.

A TikTok spokesperson stated that the short-video sharing platform disagrees with the DPC Ireland penalty, arguing that the allegations are no longer relevant as the company had already implemented remedial measures before the DPC Ireland investigation began in September 2021.

TikTok added stricter controls to its "Family Pairing" feature in November 2020 and changed the default settings from public to private for all user accounts under 16 in January 2021.

This is the first time TikTok has been fined by DPC Ireland. Previously, several other tech giants have also been fined by DPC Ireland for violating GDPR, including Meta, the company that owns Facebook, with fines of up to 2.5 billion Euros.

By the end of last year, the agency had conducted 22 investigations into multinational companies based in Ireland.

The GDPR was introduced by the EU in 2018 to protect users' privacy from the unauthorized use of personal data by technology companies operating within the union.

GDPR applies to organizations within the EU, as well as companies located outside the EU. Companies that violate GDPR can face fines of up to 4% of their global revenue.

Source: https://baoquocte.vn/tiktok-bi-phat-vi-vi-pham-quy-dinh-bao-ve-quyen-rieng-tu-cua-tre-em-242313.html