2023-09-15 13:29:00
Bad news for TikTok. According to the European Union, the social network violated its data protection rules (GDPR) in the processing of information concerning minors.
Consequently, TikTok Technology Limited will have to pay“administrative fines for a total amount of 345 million euros”and bring its operations into compliance within three months, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), acting on behalf of the EU, announced in a press release this Friday, September 15.
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This conviction follows an investigation opened by the DPC, competent to act on behalf of the EU because TikTok’s main establishment in Europe is in Ireland, in September 2021 and whose investigations were carried out from July 31 to December 31 2020. The Irish authority notes in particular in its decision that the registration of children on the platform was done in such a way that their accounts were defined as public by default.
Other problems related to the “family connection” mode, which allows you to link a parent’s TikTok account to that of their teenager. According to the decision, the company notably did not verify whether the associated user was actually the parent or guardian.
In addition, if the platform is in theory reserved for users aged at least 13, the DPC considers that TikTok did not properly take into account the risks posed to younger people who still managed to create an account.
TikTok “respectfully disagree with the decision” European
A hard blow for the subsidiary of the Chinese giant ByteDance, very popular among young people, which today has 150 million users in the United States and 134 million in the European Union. After the announcement of the European decision, a spokesperson said in a statement sent to AFP that TikTok is “respectfully disagree with the decision, in particular the level of the fine imposed”, specifying that the company evaluates next stepswithout commenting on the possibility of appealing.
“Criticism of the DPC focuses on features and settings that were in place three years ago, and which we have changed” shortly after, the company argued, noting for example that all accounts of people under 16 are now private by default.
In addition, it claims to closely monitor the age of its users, and notably indicates that it deleted nearly 17 million accounts worldwide in the first three months of 2023 alone because they were suspected of belonging to people of under 13 years old.
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This is not the first time TikTok has been fined for its handling of minors’ data. In 2019, the social network was fined $5.7 million in the United States in 2019, 750,000 euros in the Netherlands in 2021 and 12.7 million pounds in the United Kingdom last April. for comparable facts. As for France, its Parliament voted at the end of June to require platforms like TikTok, Snapchat or Instagram to verify the age of their users and parental consent when they are under 15 years old.
TikTok banned from politicians’ phones
The decision taken by Europe and announced this Friday should not improve the image of the social network already banned from the phones of political leaders in several countries. This is particularly the case in France according to a decision announced on March 24 which prohibits the installation and use of the Chinese application TikTok for civil servants. More generally, all so-called “recreational” applications, such as Netflix, are affected, on the professional phones of the 2.5 million state civil service agents.
To justify this decision, the government cited reasons “risks in terms of cybersecurity and data protection of public officials and the administration”. Shortly before, it was the United Kingdom which decreed the immediate ban of TikTok on government devices due to security fears. The same decision was taken by Australia the following month.
The data of its European users hosted in Ireland
In an attempt to allay data protection concerns, particularly due to its Chinese shareholders, TikTok announced at the beginning of September that it had started hosting the data of its European users in Ireland. “Our first data center in Dublin, Ireland is now operational and the migration of European user data to this center has already started, while our other two centers in Norway and Ireland are under construction”, indicated the subsidiary of ByteDance in a press release. This project, called Clover and announced in March, represents an annual investment of 1.2 billion euros for TikTok.
At the same time, the social network has formed a partnership with the British cybersecurity company NCC Group. This will be responsible for carrying out “an independent audit” data protection implemented, “monitor data flows” and of “report any incident”.
Modeled on the measures imposed on the social network in the United States, these provisions aim to prevent ByteDance employees located in China from accessing “protected data” of Europeans, in particular the real names of users, their email address, their telephone number or even the IP address of their terminals, assured TikTok officials.
(With AFP)
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