TikTok Fined IDR 5.8 Trillion By EU Privacy Regulator For Children's Data Violations

JAKARTA - TikTok, China's short video platform, was fined 345 million euros (about 5.8 trillion rupiah) by European Union privacy regulators for violating privacy laws related to child processing of personal data. Ireland's Protection Commissioner (DPC) data, which is the main regulator in the EU for most of the world's leading technology companies as their regional headquarters are in Ireland, announced the fine on Friday, September 15.

This is the first time TikTok has been owned by ByteDance has received a warning from the DPC. In a statement, the DPC stated that TikTok violated a number of EU privacy laws between July 31, 2020 and December 31, 2020.

In 2020, TikTok has defaulted user accounts to "public", and TikTok does not verify whether the user is a parent or guardian of a child user when using the "family pairing" feature.

TikTok then increased parental control for the "family pairing" feature in November 2020 and changed the default settings for all users registered under the age of 16 to "private" in January 2021.

TikTok expressed its disapproval of this decision, particularly regarding the magnitude of the fine, and claimed that most criticism was no longer relevant because of the actions it had taken before the DPC investigation began in September 2021.

The DPC gives TikTok three months to ensure that all of their data processing is in accordance with applicable privacy rules. The DPC is also conducting an investigation into TikTok's personal data transfer to China and whether TikTok complies with EU data laws when transferring personal data to countries outside the EU.

Under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposed in 2018, major regulators for companies can provide fines of up to 4% of the company's global revenue. The DPC has imposed a large fine on other technology companies, including a total fine of 2.5 billion euros (Rp41 trillion) given to Meta.