The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined the popular video sharing platform TikTok by €345 million for breaching the European Union’s data protection law (GDPR). The amount of this fine in Bangladeshi currency is more than 4 thousand 39 crores taka.
According to a report by American technology news website The Verge on Friday (September 15), the Chinese platform’s default account settings; “Family Pairing” settings; And investigating officers found data protection flaws in age verification. After consulting the European Data Protection Board, the DPC found that TikTok sets children’s accounts as public by default when signing up to the platform. In other words, the default setting in the app makes it possible to easily communicate with 13 to 17-year-old TikTok users.
The report also said that there are allegations against TikTok as TikTok has violated the terms of children’s confidential information. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) opened an investigation into the allegations in September 2021. According to the investigation, there is no such thing as privacy protection for TikTok users. Anyone logging into the respective account is getting all the information including phone number required for contact.
A huge fine was decided against TikTok only after the allegations were proved.