The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against TikTok on Friday, accusing the popular app, already under threat of a ban in the United States, of “widespread violations of children’s privacy laws.”
Because of the platform of the Chinese group ByteDance, millions of children under the age of 13 were subjected to “extensive data collection” and “interacted with adult users and accessed adult content,” the department summarized in a press release.
According to the complaint, TikTok “knowingly” allowed children to create accounts and surf the social network used by 170 million people in the United States.
Since 2019, the app and its parent company “have collected and stored a wide range of personal information about these minors without informing their parents or obtaining their consent. Even for accounts created in “Kids Mode” […] “, details the American department.
The lawsuit “is necessary to prevent children under the age of 13 from using the regular TikTok app,” Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton said in the statement.
It is also necessary, he added, to prevent the defendants, “who are repeat offenders and operate on a large scale, from collecting and using the private data of young children without parental consent or control.”
The US consumer protection agency, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), had made a report to the Justice Department in June, because it “had reason to believe” that TikTok and ByteDance “were violating or were in the process of violating the law”.
Follow-up survey
The FTC was conducting a follow-up investigation to ensure that the platform was complying with the terms of a 2019 settlement, when it accused TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly, of improperly collecting personal data from underage users.
TikTok had agreed to pay $5.7 million in compensation and committed to complying with the provisions of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), adopted in 1998.
In a message on X (ex-Twitter), TikTok said it was “disappointed that the agency chose litigation rather than continuing to work with us to reach a reasonable solution.”
“We strongly disagree with the FTC’s allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are misrepresented or have already been addressed,” the company continued, saying it has implemented “strict safeguards” and suspends the accounts of users under the age of 13.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request from AFP.
The US Congress passed a bill in April to force ByteDance to sell its flagship app within nine months or risk it being banned in the United States.
The government and many elected officials accuse it of collecting data on American citizens for Beijing and consider it a threat to national security.
“The FTC will continue to use the full scope of its powers to protect children online, especially as companies deploy increasingly sophisticated digital tools to monitor children and profit from their data,” FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan said Friday.