Recently TechCity reported that the government of Ireland slammed a $402m fine on Instagram for mishandling data of teenage users on its platform. TikTok is next to receive a similar fine for similar reasons as the UK government said earlier this week it could impose a multimillion-dollar fine on TikTok after finding that the short-form video platform may have violated children’s privacy.
The potential fine of £27million follows an investigation by the UK’s data privacy regulator, which found that over between May 2018 and July 2020, TikTok may have breached UK law by processing data of kids under 13 without parental consent.
In a statement, UK Information Commissioner John Edwards said, “We all want children to be able to learn and experience the digital world, but with proper data privacy protections. Companies providing digital services have a legal duty to put those protections in place, but our provisional view is that TikTok fell short of meeting that requirement.”
In response , TikTok said: “While we respect the ICO’s role in safeguarding privacy in the UK, we disagree with the preliminary views expressed and intend to formally respond to the ICO in due course.”