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TikTok’s parent company taken to court for collecting data on children
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance Inc., is being sued for collecting and disclosing data of children under the age of 13, according to court documents lodged Tuesday.
Those children were users of the Musical.ly app, which was bought by ByteDance in 2017 and later turned into the immensely popular video streaming app, TikTok. According to the complaint, filed at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, ByteDance knowingly collected data on children under the age of 13 and sold that data to third-party companies.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA, in the U.S. states that media companies cannot collect data on children under the age of 13 without their parents’ consent. The complaint actually accuses the app of willfully targeting children under that age.
It alleges that the company didn’t have safeguards that would prevent young people signing up to the app. It goes on to that even if a profile was set to private, profile information including photographs were searchable by anyone.
Moreover, there was a feature on the Musical.ly app that allowed users to find other users within a 50-mile radius. If found, the people could connect with each and send direct messages. According to the complaint, this could have resulted in predatory behavior by unseemly characters.
“Because the app had virtually all privacy features disabled by default, there were serious ramifications, including reports of adults trying to contact minor children via the app,” read the complaint. “These reports exposed the dangerous potential of the app, which allowed adults posing as children to send inappropriate messages to minor children using the app.”
In a statement to The Verge, TikTok said it had been aware of the allegations for a while and at the moment trying to reach a resolution. Earlier this year ByteDance agreed to settle a separate complaint for $5.7 million after the company was accused of doing the same thing and collecting data on youngsters without their parents’ consent.
This is a trying time for TikTok. In October, two U.S. senators said that the app needs to be investigated for its data collection practices, stating that the Chinese-owned company could present a risk to national security. TikTok subsequently made efforts to appease its doubters.
Photo: Anthony Kelly/Flickr
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