TikTok may be fined £27m for failing to protect children

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If TikTok fails to protect children's privacy when they use the platform, they could face a huge fine.

The video-sharing platform may have processed the data of under-13s without their consent, according to the Information Commissioner's Office.

Over the course of more than two years, the watchdog said it had not drawn a conclusion.

The findings are disputed by TikTok.

A notice of intent is a legal document which precedes a possible fine.

The notice shows that the data protection law in the UK was violated by TikTok over the course of a year.

The social platform may have something to do with it.

• processed the data of children under the age of 13 without appropriate parental consent
• failed to provide proper information to its users in a concise, transparent and easily understood way
• processed special category data, without legal grounds to do so

According to Ofcom, almost half of the UK's children use TikTok despite the platform's ban on under 13s.

Children need proper data privacy protections to be able to learn and experience the digital world.

"Companies providing digital services have a legal duty to put those protections in place, but our preliminary view is that TikTok didn't meet that requirement."

Allowing parents to link their accounts to their children's is one of the new features that TikTok has introduced.

Enforcement action will be involved in the work to better protect children online.

We are currently looking into how over 50 different online services are conforming with the Children's Code and have six ongoing investigations looking into companies who haven't taken their responsibilities around child safety seriously enough.

New data protection codes of practice for online services likely to be accessed by children were put in place by the Children's Code in September of last year.

There was no conclusion to be reached at this time about whether there had been a violation of data protection law, according to the Information Commissioner's Office.

We will take a final decision after carefully considering any representations from TikTok.

No final conclusions can be drawn at this time, as the notice of intent is only a preliminary one, according to a TikTok spokesman.

We disagree with the preliminary views expressed and intend to respond to theICO in due course.

The firm was fined a record amount by the Federal Trade Commission.

In South Korea, it was fined for the same reason.

The Senate Commerce Committee voted in July to raise the age of online privacy protections for children to 16 and prohibit targeted advertising to children without their consent.

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