TikTok Broke Privacy Promises, Children’s Groups Say
- 4 years ago
Last year, TikTok agreed to make major changes to settle charges that one of its predecessor companies, Musical.ly, had violated the federal children’s online privacy law.
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The alleged violations included collecting names, email addresses, videos and other personal information from users under the age of 13 without a parent’s consent.
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As part of the settlement, the video-sharing app agreed to obtain a parent’s permission before collecting their child’s personal information.
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It also agreed to delete personal information, including videos, of any children identified as younger than 13 and to remove videos and other personal details of users whose ages were unknown.
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Among other things, the complaint identified a number of videos posted by children under 13 in 2016 that TikTok had not deleted and that remain on the app.
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The groups also identified problems with age verification for younger users.
Last year, the app set up a service for children under 13, TikTok for Younger Users, which prevents them from posting videos and does not collect their personal data.
The app was downloaded about 11 million times by new users in the United States in March, nearly twice the total in December, according to Sensor Tower, a company that tracks app usage data.
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Members of Congress have raised national security concerns about TikTok’s growing influence and about the risk that the app may share user data with its parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese conglomerate.
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ByteDance bought Musical.ly for $1 billion in 2017 and merged it with TikTok, an app it already owned.
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The alleged violations included collecting names, email addresses, videos and other personal information from users under the age of 13 without a parent’s consent.
--bl--
As part of the settlement, the video-sharing app agreed to obtain a parent’s permission before collecting their child’s personal information.
--bl--
It also agreed to delete personal information, including videos, of any children identified as younger than 13 and to remove videos and other personal details of users whose ages were unknown.
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Among other things, the complaint identified a number of videos posted by children under 13 in 2016 that TikTok had not deleted and that remain on the app.
--bl--
The groups also identified problems with age verification for younger users.
Last year, the app set up a service for children under 13, TikTok for Younger Users, which prevents them from posting videos and does not collect their personal data.
The app was downloaded about 11 million times by new users in the United States in March, nearly twice the total in December, according to Sensor Tower, a company that tracks app usage data.
--bl--
Members of Congress have raised national security concerns about TikTok’s growing influence and about the risk that the app may share user data with its parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese conglomerate.
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ByteDance bought Musical.ly for $1 billion in 2017 and merged it with TikTok, an app it already owned.