A former Commissioner for Children in England on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the video platform TikTok accusing it of illegally collecting personal data from millions of children in the UK and Europe.
Anne Longfield sued TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance on behalf of these children, under the age of 16 in the EU and 13 in the UK, expecting a total compensation of billions of pounds, according to a statement.
According to her, some 3.5 million minors are concerned in the United Kingdom. Longfield estimates that all children who have used TikTok since May 2018, that is, since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union, whether they have an account or not, could be affected by this data collection.
This personal information includes phone numbers, videos, images, connection location, or even biometric data, such as facial recognition. The complaint, also filed by the Scott + Scott law firm, claims that TikTok collects data without sufficient notice, without transparency, and without asking for consent, as required by law.
According to the plaintiffs, TikTok, which has 800 million users worldwide, is intentionally “opaque” about its use of data that is “incredibly valuable” to the company, whose Cayman Islands-registered parent ByteDance should generate almost $ 30 billion in revenue by 2020, two-thirds of which comes from advertising.
“Behind the funny songs, the dance challenges, or the playback, there is something much more malicious,” said Longfield. “We want TikTok to end its questionable data collection practices, and we demand that it erase all private information illegally obtained when children use the app,” she said.
A TikTok spokesperson responded by stating that the complaint “is unfounded” and that the company “intends to vigorously defend itself.” “Privacy and security are top priorities for TikTok and we have strong practices and technologies in place to protect all users, and teens in particular,” he added.
TikTok had already been fined $ 5.7 million in the United States in February 2019 for illegally collecting personal data from children under the age of 13, including their names, emails, and postal addresses.
AFP
