TikTok Faces Legal Action by DoJ and FTC for Violating Children’s Privacy Laws
The Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have jointly filed a lawsuit against TikTok, the popular video-sharing platform, for allegedly breaching children’s privacy laws within the United States.
According to the authorities, the company permitted children to establish accounts on TikTok, enabling them to view and distribute short-form videos and messages with adults and other users on the platform.
Furthermore, TikTok is accused of unlawfully collecting and storing a wide range of personal data from these children without informing or acquiring consent from their parents, which violates the regulations outlined in the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
The company’s actions also violated a consent decree from 2019 between TikTok and the government, where TikTok had committed to alert parents before gathering children’s data and remove videos uploaded by users under 13 years old.
COPPA mandates online platforms to refrain from collecting, utilizing, or disclosing personal data from children under the age of 13 without parental consent. It also necessitates companies to delete such collected data upon parents’ request.
“Even for accounts established under ‘Kids Mode‘ (a restricted version of TikTok for children under 13), the defendants illicitly gathered and retained email addresses and various personal data of children,” DoJ’s statement indicated.
“Additionally, when parents identified their children’s accounts and requested deletion, the defendants frequently disregarded such requests,” the filing mentioned.
The lawsuit further claimed that TikTok, owned by ByteDance, subjected millions of children under 13 to extensive data collection to enable targeted advertising and access to adult content and interactions with adults.
It also criticized TikTok for inadequately screening accounts during registration, providing loopholes that allowed children to bypass the age verification and register using services like Google and Instagram, categorizing such accounts as “age unknown.”
“Reportedly, TikTok’s reviewers only spent an average of five to seven seconds evaluating each account to determine if it belonged to a child,” as per the FTC’s statement. The agency pledged to safeguard children’s privacy from companies utilizing advanced digital tools to monitor children and benefit from their data.
TikTok boasts over 170 million active users in the U.S. While the company disputes the accusations, this legal action adds to the challenges faced by the video-sharing platform, especially amidst other laws that might lead to a sale or ban of the app by early 2025 due to national security concerns. TikTok has taken legal steps to challenge this potential ban.
“We refute these claims, many of which pertain to past events and practices that are either inaccurate or have been resolved,” TikTok’s official response stated. “We offer appropriate experiences with strict safeguards, actively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily introduced features like default screen time limits, Family Pairing, and extra privacy measures for minors.”
The social platform has also been under international scrutiny regarding child protection. In September 2023, TikTok faced a €345 million fine from EU regulators for breaching data protection laws related to children’s data. Additionally, the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) imposed a £12.7 million fine on TikTok in April 2023 for unauthorized processing of data for 1.4 million children under 13 without parental consent.
The lawsuit surfaces as the ICO disclosed it had contacted 11 media and video-sharing services to enhance their practices regarding children’s privacy or face enforcement actions. The identity of these services was not revealed.
“Among the 34 platforms we reached out to, eleven are being probed over matters concerning default privacy settings, geolocation, age verification, and compliance with the [Children’s Code],” according to an official statement. “We are additionally engaging with some platforms on targeted advertising to lay down requirements for adjustments to ensure compliance with both legal regulations and the code.”
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