Ireland Fines TikTok IDR 9.8 Trillion For Data Transfer To China

UNSPLASH/Jonathan Kemper ILLUSTRATION

JAKARTA - TikTok was fined 530 million euros (approximately 601 million US dollars or Rp9.8 trillion) by Irish data protection authorities for violating EU privacy rules.

This verdict is one of the biggest penalties ever imposed under General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

The ruling is the result of a lengthy investigation conducted by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which found the Chinese-owned platform had violated the GDPR by transferring European users' personal data to China, where the data was accessed by engineers.

The fine is the third-largest ever brought down by the DPC, after a fine of 746 million euros (Rp 13.9 trillion) against Amazon and a record 1.2 billion euros (Rp 22.3 trillion) to Facebook owner Meta Platforms.

The DPC concluded that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, failed to apply adequate protection for users' personal data methods from the European Economic Zone (EEA) accessed from abroad.

TikTok's personal data transfer to China violated the GDPR because TikTok failed to verify, guarantee, and prove that EAE users' personal data accessed remotely by staff in China received equivalent protection as guaranteed within the European Union, "said DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle, in a statement quoted by ANTARA from Anadolu, Saturday, May 3.

As a result of TikTok's failure to conduct the necessary assessments, TikTok did not respond adequately to the potential access by Chinese authorities to EAE's personal data under anti-terrorism laws, counter-spionage, and other regulations that TikTok itself acknowledged differs substantially from EU standards, "he continued.

TikTok said it would appeal the ruling and warned the decision could have a broad impact on other global companies dealing with cross-border data flows.