SAN FRANCISCO– The United States on Friday sued the TikTok platform for violating the privacy of underage users by collecting data about them without their parents’ permission.
The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have joined forces in a civil lawsuit alleging that the popular video-sharing app violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
According to US authorities, the company committed a “widespread violation of laws protecting children’s privacy.”
Due to the methodology of the platform owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, millions of children under the age of 13 have been subjected to a “extensive data collection” and they have also “interacted with adult users and accessed adult content”the Department summarized in a statement.
TikTok is alleged to have “knowingly” allowed minors to create accounts and browse its social network, which is frequented by 170 million people in the United States.
The Justice Department alleged that since 2019, the app and its parent company “have collected and stored a wide range of personal information about these minors without informing their parents or obtain your consent. Even for accounts created in ‘Kids Mode’.
This legal action “is necessary to prevent children under the age of 13 from using the regular TikTok app,” Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton was quoted as saying in the press release.
It is also necessary, he added, to prevent the defendants, “who are repeat offenders and operate on a large scale, from collecting and using private data of young children without parental consent or control.”
The U.S. Consumer Protection Agency (FTC) filed a report with the Department of Justice in June because it “had reason to believe” that TikTok and ByteDance “were violating or were in the process of violating the law.”
Follow-up
The FTC was investigating whether the platform complied with the terms of a 2019 settlement, when it accused TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly, of improperly collecting personal data from underage users.
TikTok had agreed to pay $5.7 million in damages and had committed to complying with the provisions of the COPPA law (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act), adopted in 1998.
In a post on the X network, TikTok said it was “disappointed that the agency chose to be contentious rather than continue to work together to find a reasonable solution.”
“We strongly disagree with the FTC’s allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are misrepresented or have already been addressed,” the company said, adding that it has implemented “strict protections” and suspended the accounts of users under the age of 13.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from AFP.
In April, the US Congress approved a bill to force ByteDance to sell its flagship app to a local company within nine months, under the threat of banning its activity in the United States.
U.S. officials and lawmakers accuse the company of collecting data on American citizens for the Chinese government and believe it poses a threat to national security.
“The FTC will continue to use the full scope of its powers to protect children online, especially as companies deploy increasingly sophisticated digital tools to monitor children and profit from their data,” Lina Khan, the agency’s chairwoman, said Friday.
Source: With information from AFP.