US sued TikTok and ByteDance for violating children’s privacy laws

The U.S. Department of Justice has sued TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, for extensive violations of children’s privacy laws.

The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a civil lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California against TikTok Inc., its parent company ByteDance Ltd., and their affiliates (together, TikTok) for extensive violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and its implementing regulations (COPPA) in connection with the popular TikTok app.

According to COPPA, website operators are forbidden from collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under 13 without parental consent and mandates deletion of such data upon parental request. In 2019, the government sued TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly, for COPPA violations. Since then, TikTok and ByteDance have been under a court order to implement measures to comply with COPPA.

“According to the complaint, from 2019 to the present, TikTok knowingly permitted children to create regular TikTok accounts and to create, view, and share short-form videos and messages with adults and others on the regular TikTok platform. The defendants collected and retained a wide variety of personal information from these children without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents.” reads the press release published by DoJ. “Even for accounts that were created in “Kids Mode” (a pared-back version of TikTok intended for children under 13), the defendants unlawfully collected and retained children’s email addresses and other types of personal information.”

DoJ also added that when parents requested the deletion of their children’s accounts and information, TikTok and ByteDance often failed to comply. The companies also had inadequate internal policies and processes for identifying and removing accounts created by children.

The social network giant exposed millions of children under 13 to extensive data collection, interactions with adult users, and adult content by violating COPPA. The complaint seeks civil penalties and injunctive relief.

“The Department is deeply concerned that TikTok has continued to collect and retain children’s personal information despite a court order barring such conduct,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer. “With this action, the Department seeks to ensure that TikTok honors its obligation to protect children’s privacy rights and parents’ efforts to protect their children.”

TikTok disagrees with these allegations, it said that many of them relate to past events and practices that have been already addressed. It is also proud of its efforts to protect children.

In September 2023, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined TikTok €345 million for violating children’s privacy. The Irish data regulators discovered that the popular video-sharing app allowed adults to send direct messages to certain teenagers who have no family connection with them.

The investigation conducted by the DPC revealed a severe flaw in TikTok’s “family pairing” feature that could be abused to link children’s accounts to “unverified” adults.

Children under 13 are exposed to serious risks due to the default account setting that allows anyone to view the content they publish.

“The decision further details that non-child users had the power to enable direct messages for child users above the age of 16, thereby making this feature less strict for the child user,” explained the officer of DPC Helen Dixon, as reported by the Irish Times. “This also meant that, for example, videos that were posted to child users’ accounts were public by default, comments were enabled publicly by default, the Duet and Stitch features were enabled by default.”

TikTok was also accused of lacking adequate transparency when dealing with the way it processes data of its young users.

The DPC also criticized the processes behind the TikTok registration and the publishing of videos, which according to the Irish authority were designed to drive the users toward selecting options that exposed their privacy to risks.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, ByteDance)