The siege of Western countries on TikTok continues to tighten after the British privacy watchdog has decided to sanction the Chinese social network with a historic fine for misusing children’s data and violating other privacy protections. the personal information of users.
Specifically, TikTok faces an economic punishment of 12.7 million pounds (14.5 million euros) by the Office of the Information Commissioner of the United Kingdom, the umpteenth of its legal setbacks in the complicated international panorama that it has in front.
According to a complaint by the British regulatory body, TikTok allowed up to 1.4 million children under the age of 13 in the United Kingdom to use the application in 2020, despite the fact that the platform’s own rules prohibit children that young from creating accounts, as reflected in their data investigations between May 2018 and July 2020.
The Chinese app did not properly identify or remove accounts under 13s using it, and even knowing that young children were using it, did not require parental consent to process their data, as required by UK data protection laws. of data.
Information Commissioner John Edwards has explained that TikTok collected and used personal data from children who were given access to the app inappropriately: “There are laws in place to ensure that our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the offline. physical. TikTok did not comply with those laws.”
Edwards goes even further, pointing out the dangers this behavior may have had: “This means their data may have been used to track and profile them, potentially serving them with harmful and inappropriate content.”
Furthermore, TikTok did not adequately inform people about how their data is collected, used and shared in an easily understandable way. Without this information, young users are unlikely to be able to “make informed decisions” about whether and how to use the app.
TikTok’s defense ensures that they work firmly so that these situations do not occur: “We invest a lot to keep children under 13 years of age off the platform and our security team of 40,000 people works day and night to keep the platform safe for our community,” he detailed in a statement.
From the social network from China they promise to continue “reviewing the decision” of the British regulator and warn that they are studying “the next steps”, in addition to reiterating that it has improved its registration system since the infringements occurred by no longer allowing users to simply state that they are old enough and look for other signs that an account is being used by someone under 13.
Just a few hours ago Australia announced the ban on TikTok on mobile phones and government devices. The Australian government explained that the decision was due to cybersecurity reasons to veto the social network. Also, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus commented that he was afraid of possible “foreign interference.”
According to the Australian authorities, they were based on “advice from intelligence and security agencies”. Previously, the director of the country’s intelligence service, Mike Burgess, had declared before a Senate committee that social networks are used to “disseminate information.”