In February 2019, social app TikTok agreed to pay $5.7m in a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) following allegations that it illegally collected personal information from children. It was “the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the Commission in a children’s privacy case” according to the FTC. But now another country’s privacy regulator is on the case too: the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK.
“We are looking at the transparency tools for children. We’re looking at the messaging system, which is completely open, we’re looking at the kind of videos that are collected and shared by children online. We do have an active investigation into TikTok right now, so watch this space,” said the UK’s information commissioner Elizabeth Denham yesterday, while giving evidence to a parliamentary committee in London, according to the Guardian. The investigation also includes examining whether TikTok is violating the general data protection regulation (GDPR) legislation.
TikTok’s official response came in a statement: “We cooperate with organisations such as the ICO to provide relevant information about our product to support their work. Ensuring data protection principles are upheld as a top priority for TikTok.”
The app was already on the ICO’s radar, and not just because of that FTC settlement in February. In May, the ICO and communications regulator Ofcom published a study conducted by research firm Jigsaw Research into ‘Internet users’ concerns about and experience of potential online harms’. One slide presented the results of asking 12-15 year-olds which brands they trust to protect them from offensive content; to not provide misleading information; and to use their data responsibly / protect their personal data.
For all three questions, TikTok came bottom of the list, with only 40%, 40% and 42% of respondents agreeing with those statements, respectively. Although in fairness, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat all scored below 50% on all three counts too. Investigations by regulators like the FTC and ICO have teeth, financially, but it’s the trust levels from TikTok’s users (and their parents) that the app and its parent company Bytedance should be just as worried about.
