TikTok Hit with Record Setting Fine for Collecting Data of Children

TikTok, a popular video-sharing app, has agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle allegations that it collected data on children.

• By Sydny Shepard
• Mar 04, 2019

Popular video-sharing app TikTok has agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle allegations that it illegally collected personal information from children under the age of 13, such as names, email addresses and their location.

the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said in a statement that the TikTok fine is a record for a child privacy case.

TikTok, which belongs to $75 billion startup ByteDance, has more than half a billion users worldwide. The company merged popular video-sharing app Musical.ly and TikTok last August. The fines handed down by the United States relate back to "disturbing practices" by Musical.ly. 

The FTC said its investigation into Musical.ly discovered practices, including "collecting and exposing the location" of young children. Despite receiving thousands of complaints from parents, the company failed to comply with requests to delete the information about underage children and held onto it longer than necessary, according to the commission. 

TikTok said in a statement that it is committed to "creating measures" to protect users, including tools for parents to protect their kids.

Last Wednesday, the company introduced a "separate app experience" for younger U.S. users in which they "cannot do things like share their videos on TikTok, comment on others' videos, message with users or maintain a profile or followers."