€345m (£296m) has been fined to TikTok by the Irish regulators due to the violations of children’s privacy.
Irish regulators have fined €345m (£296m) TikTok because social media has handled children’s data casually since 2020. The complaint was received by the Irish regulators due to the issues of privacy settings and age verification. To date, this fine is the biggest TikTok will give to the regulators.
A TikTok spokesperson gave a statement against the fine. According to the statement, TikTok respectfully disagrees with this particular decision. Moreover, the level of penalty imposed by the regulators is not according to the violations implemented.
The spokesperson said, “The criticisms are focused on features and settings that were in place three years ago and that we made changes to well before the investigation even began, such as setting all under 16 accounts to private by default.”
According to the details, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) issued the fine. This fine falls under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law. This law mainly deals with the data handling of such companies and social media platforms.
Ireland’s DPC also identified that TikTok does not follow transparent procedures and practices to protect children from unauthorized data. DPC thinks that TikTok’s privacy policy is not according to the Data Protection Commissioner. DPC raised questions about the data policy made by TikTok.
Helen Dixon, Data Protection Commissioner, discussed the issue with BBC News. According to him, TikTok has not used proper policy when registering individuals between the ages of 13 and 17. It means their data becomes available and visible to everyone.
Dixon said, “That is precisely at the hands of TikTok because of how they designed the platform, and we say that infringed the data protection by design and by the default requirements of the GDPR.”
