DOJ Accuses Chinese-Owned TikTok Of Illegally Collecting Children’s Data In Lawsuit
The Department of Justice (DOJ) accused TikTok and its Chinese parent company of illegally collecting kids’ data in a lawsuit filed in a federal court on Friday. The DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged…
The Department of Justice (DOJ) accused TikTok and its Chinese parent company of illegally collecting kids’ data in a lawsuit filed in a federal court on Friday.
The DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, broke a 2019 agreement with the FTC by continuing to scoop up the data of millions of children under the age of 13 without parental permission and not carrying out parents’ requests to delete data in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The federal government is alleging that TikTok violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (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,” the DOJ said of its lawsuit. “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. Further, when parents discovered their children’s accounts and asked the defendants to delete the accounts and information in them, the defendants frequently failed to honor those requests.”