TikTok fined £12.7m for ‘letting 1.4m underage children in UK use app’

Chinese-owned app ‘should have known better’ says UK information commissioner

TikTok has received a £12.7m fine from UK regulators because it “failed to use children’s personal data lawfully” and “did not do enough” to prevent underage children from using its platform.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the Chinese-owned social media app failed to get parental consent for up to 1.4 million UK children under 13 among its users despite its own rules not allowing children that age to create an account.

“There are laws in place to make sure our children are as safe in the digital world as they are in the physical world. TikTok did not abide by those laws,” said information commissioner John Edwards.

“As a consequence, an estimated one million under-13s were inappropriately granted access to the platform, with TikTok collecting and using their personal data. That means that their data may have been used to track them and profile them, potentially delivering harmful, inappropriate content at their very next scroll.

“TikTok should have known better. TikTok should have done better. Our £12.7m fine reflects the serious impact their failures may have had. They did not do enough to check who was using their platform or take sufficient action to remove the underage children that were using their platform.”

The regulator slashed the potential fine of £27m after deciding not to pursue an initial finding that the company had unlawfully used “special category data” such as ethnic and racial origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, trade union membership, genetic and biometric data or health data.

A TikTok spokesperson told The Independent: “TikTok is a platform for users aged 13 and over. We invest heavily to help keep under 13s off the platform and our 40,000-strong safety team works around the clock to help keep the platform safe for our community.

“While we disagree with the ICO’s decision, which relates to May 2018 - July 2020, we are pleased that the fine announced today has been reduced to under half the amount proposed last year. We will continue to review the decision and are considering next steps.”

The fine comes on the same day that Australia announced that it would ban TikTok from all government devices, marking another setback for the viral video app.

Australia joins the US, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, the EU and the UK in enforcing a partial TikTok ban, while Afghanistan and India have both imposed a complete ban of the app.