US accuses TikTok of violating children’s privacy

SAN FRANCISCO: The United States in a lawsuit on Friday accused TikTok of violating children´s privacy by collecting data about them without their parents´ permission when they use the app.

The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) joined forces in a civil suit saying the popular video-snippet sharing app broke the Children´s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

“TikTok knowingly and repeatedly violated kids´ privacy, threatening the safety of millions of children across the country,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a release.

COPPA bars websites from gathering personal information about children younger than 13 years of age without getting parental permission.

The suit argues that since 2019 TikTok has allowed children to use the app, collecting and using personal data from young users without letting their parents know.

Even accounts created in a “Kids Mode” intended for users younger than 13 gathered email addresses and other personal information, the suit contends.

TikTok and its parent company ByteDance often “failed to honour” requests by parents to have their children´s accounts and data removed, and had ineffective policies for identifying and deleting accounts created by children, justice department officials said in the release.

“This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a massive scale, from collecting and using young children´s private information without any parental consent or control,” Justice Department deputy assistant attorney Brian Boynton said in the release.