Home Tech TikTok is sued with allegations of illegal collection of personal data

TikTok is sued with allegations of illegal collection of personal data

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TikTok is facing a UK lawsuit alleging illegally collecting personal data from millions of children in Europe.

Icon of Tik Tok video-sharing application on smartphone screen in Paris, France. Photo: AFP / VNA Former UK children’s commissioner Anne Longfield, and the law firm Scott + Scott, on behalf of children under the age of 13 in the UK and 16 years old in the European Economic Area (EEA) filed a lawsuit against TikTok and the public. parent company ByteDance. The lawsuit alleges TikTok and ByteDance violate the data protection laws of children (GDPR) of the UK and the European Union (EU) and deceive parents about the extent of personal information leakage of the children. kids when they use this app. TikTok’s behavior is believed to affect more than 3.5 million children in the UK. In a statement dated April 21, Ms. Longfield emphasized “TikTok is an extremely popular social media platform that helps children keep in touch with their friends during the past extremely difficult year. Behind the hilarious songs, choreography challenges and the lip-sync movement is something much more damaging. According to her, parents as well as children have the right to personal information, including phone number, physical location and illegally collected videos. The former UK children’s commissioner stated that the lawsuit is intended to force TikTok to “terminate data collection”, and to ask the platform to remove any personal information that has been “illegally processed”. when kids use this app. The lawsuit states that since May 2018, every child using TikTok, regardless of having an account or possible privacy settings, has been illegally collected by ByteDance through TikTok for the benefit of Unidentified third parties. The lawsuit also mentioned recent hefty fines for TikTok in the US and South Korea following cases of child data leaks. In response, TikTok insists the app has “robust policies, procedures and technologies to help protect all users, especially teen users”. TikTok will strongly protect itself, while asserting that privacy and safety are always the “top priority” of this platform.