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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Departmentare suing TikTok and ByteDance , TikTok ’s parent company , with violating the Children ’s Online Privacy Protection Act ( COPPA ) . The law requires digital platforms to notify and receive parents ’ consent before collecting and using personal data from nipper under the age of 13 .
In apress releaseissued Friday , the FTC ’s Bureau of Consumer Protection allege that TikTok and ByteDance were “ allegedly aware ” of the need to comply with COPPA , yet drop “ years ” knowingly allowing millions of children under 13 on their weapons platform . TikTok did so , the FTC aver , even after settling with the FTC in 2019 over COPPA violation ; as a part of that colony , TikTok hold to pay $ 5.7 million and put through steps to forbid kids under 13 from sign on up .
“ As of 2020 , TikTok had a policy of keep accounts of children that it knew were under 13 unless the child made an explicit admittance of age and other rigid conditions were met , ” the FTC wrote in the press dismission . “ TikTok human reviewers allegedly spent an norm of only five to seven arcsecond reviewing each account to make their determination of whether the business relationship belong to a child . ”
TikTok and ByteDance maintain and used minor user ’ data point , include data point for ads point , even after employees raised concern and TikTok reportedly changed its policy not to require an explicit admission of age , harmonize to the FTC . More damningly , TikTok continued to allow substance abuser to sign up up with third - company accounts , like Google and Instagram , without aver that they were over 13 , the FTC adds .
The FTC also found issue with TikTok Kids Mode , TikTok ’s purportedly more COPPA - compliant mobile experience . Kids Mode collected “ far more data ” than needed , the FTC alleges , including information about users ’ in - app activities and identifiers that TikTok used to build profiles ( and share with third party ) to render to prevent detrition .
When parent requested that their child ’s accounts be deleted , TikTok made it difficult , the FTC said , and often failed to comply with those requests .
“ TikTok knowingly and repeatedly violated kids ’ seclusion , threatening the safe of million of children across the country , ” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a financial statement . “ The FTC will carry on to apply the full orbit of its office to protect children online — specially as firms deploy increasingly sophisticated digital tools to surveil kids and lucre from their data . ”
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TikTok had this to partake in with TechCrunch via e-mail : “ We differ with these allegation , many of which associate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been direct . We are lofty of our efforts to protect minor , and we will continue to update and amend the platform . To that conclusion , we provide years - appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards , proactively remove mistrust nonaged users , and have voluntarily launched feature such as nonremittal screen sentence limit , Family Pairing , and additional privacy protections for youngster . ”
The FTC and Justice Department purport fining TikTok and ByteDance civil penalty up to $ 51,744 per trespass per twenty-four hour period and a lasting injunction to forestall succeeding COPPA violations .
