Watchdog fines TikTok £12.7million for illegal use of Children’s personal data

The privacy watchdog has fined the viral video app TikTok £12.7m for illegally using the personal data of more than a million young children.

Ofcom research revealed 53 per cent of eight to 12-year-olds use Chinese-owned TikTok, making it the most popular social media service in that age group after YouTube, which has a dedicated version specifically for children.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said that - despite claiming to have banned them from using the service - the app had allowed 1.4m under-13s to sign up in 2020 alone.

The UK's data laws require that there be parental consent when children under 13 sign up for apps such as TikTok. However, the ICO said the video-sharing app had broken the law by failing to check people's ages and remove underage users from the platform.

"An estimated one million under 13s were inappropriately granted access to the platform, with TikTok collecting and using their personal data," said the Information Commissioner, John Edwards.

"That means that their data may have been used to track them and profile them, potentially delivering harmful, inappropriate content at their very next scroll. TikTok should have known better. TikTok should have done better. Our £12.7m fine reflects the serious impact their failures may have had. They did not do enough to check who was using their platform or take sufficient action to remove the underage children that were using their platform."

The watchdog said concerns had been raised from within TikTok about under-13s using the service and that, in the regulator's view, the app failed to respond adequately to those concerns. Last year ICO said that it could fine the app up to £27m, though following representations from TikTok it reduced the figure, however, it remains among the largest fines issued by the regulator.

This is not the first time that the platform has come under fire. TikTok was fined $5.7m (£4.6m) in 2017 by the United States for misusing children's data, in what was then a record penalty for violating children's privacy laws.

Owned by China's ByteDance, the app has faced growing scrutiny around the world over its ownership and its treatment of young users, with the UK, US and EU among those to have banned the app from all government-issued devices. Australia became the latest country to issue a similar ban, and if the app's Chinese investors do not sell their existing stake the app faces a potential total ban in the United States.

The company said it has a series of controls to prevent under-13s from accessing the platform without parental consent - such as training moderators to spot signs that an account holder may be underage and requiring new users to enter their date of birth when signing up.

Figures from the platform show that in the final quarter of last year, it removed more than 17m account holders for being too young. TikTok's chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, recently told American politicians that he allows his young children to use a version of the app that is designed for under-13s, though this version is not available in the UK.

A spokesman for TikTok said the company disagreed with the ICO's decision but that it was pleased that the final fine imposed had been reduced. "We invest heavily to help keep under-13s off the platform and our 40,000-strong safety team works around the clock to help keep the platform safe for our community," a spokesman said. 

The Johnson Partnership

(formerly GV Hale)