TikTok, the video-sharing social-media app that’s faced a global backlash over its links to China, was fined €345 million ($368 million) in the European Union for alleged lapses in the way it cares for children’s personal data.
The Irish Data Protection Commission found TikTok failed to protect minors against unnecessary data processing and didn’t act in a transparent manner, according to a decision made public on Friday.
The agency, which oversees the company because it’s EU base is in Dublin, gave TikTok a three-month ultimatum to bring its data processing in line with the bloc’s strict General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR.In addition to the scrutiny in the EU, US lawmakers have proposed multiple bills that could block the app. In the EU and the US, the company has established plans to wall off data on local servers and enlist domestic partners to oversee its data-access controls.
The Irish watchdog is the regulator for dozens of big technology companies. It opened two probes into TikTok in 2021, saying it was concerned that young users’ data wasn’t sufficiently protected and that it wanted to probe the risks of some TikTok user data being accessed by “maintenance and AI engineers in China.”Last year, it fined Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram €405 million, for improperly handling children’s personal data