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A day after Australia added itself to the list of countries that have banned TikTok from government devices, the social media app has now found itself fined for failing to enact its age limitation policy.
The £12.7 million fine was handed down by the Information Commissioner’s Office and was specifically targeted at TikTok Information Technologies UK Limited and TikTok Inc.
“The ICO estimates that TikTok allowed up to 1.4 million UK children under 13 to use its platform in 2020,” the ICO said in a statement, “despite its own rules not allowing children that age to create an account”.
The UK’s data protection laws state that a parent or carer must give consent or a child under 13 to sign up for such an app — but TikTok failed to not only adequately monitor such sign-ups but also failed to identify and remove underage users.
“There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world,” said John Edwards, the UK’s information commissioner. “TikTok did not abide by those laws.
“As a consequence, an estimated 1 million under 13s were inappropriately granted access to the platform, with TikTok collecting and using their personal data. 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 £12.7 million 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 UK banned the use of TikTok on government devices last month “with immediate effect”, citing the same privacy and security concerns as the many other countries that have since banned the social media platform.
“This is a proportionate move based on a specific risk with government devices,” said Oliver Dowden, the cabinet office minister, in a speech to the Commons at the time.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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