TikTok fined $5.7 million over children privacy laws

The famous music lip-sync application has been fined over $5 million over violating children’s privacy laws.

According to a ruling by the US Federal Trade Commission, TikTok has been fined $5.7 million over a settlement involving violation of children’s privacy laws. FTC says that the application had obtained the personal data of children under 13 years of age without the consent of their parents, violating the US children’s privacy laws.

FTC mentions that it received a lot of complaints from parents of their children as the application was registering the children’s personal data like their names, pictures, email addresses and phone numbers. The case was originally being pursued against Musical.ly, but the platform was later taken-over by TikTok, its Chinese competitor, involving it as well.

TikTok has begun to roll out a new application update which asks users to verify their age. If the age is above 13 years, the users would be taken to the regular version of the application while for the users below 13 years, the application would wear a more restricted version which won’t let them share their videos online and would protect their personal data.

TikTok is a platform which lets users create and share short lip-sync videos. Back in 2017, Bytedance, the company which owns TikTok had acquired Musical.ly, a competitor platform. Mostly being used by teenagers, ever since then, the application has risen as one of the most popular applications in the world.

News Via The Telegraph