TikTok was fined 530 million euros ($600 million) on Friday for violating a European Union information privateness legislation after regulators discovered the corporate had improperly transferred customers’ private information to China.
The Irish Knowledge Safety Fee, which introduced the penalty, mentioned TikTok didn’t adequately shield information of its customers in Europe, together with some that was accessible to employees in China, in violation of the European Union’s information privateness legislation, the Common Knowledge Safety Regulation.
The effective is likely one of the largest imposed beneath the legislation and provides to the challenges confronted by TikTok’s Chinese language proprietor, ByteDance, amid a U.S. effort to drive the platform’s sale to a non-Chinese language firm or be banned in america. Irish authorities mentioned TikTok could be ordered to droop information transfers to China inside six months if it didn’t meet sure necessities.
European regulators mentioned TikTok’s weak safeguards put in danger details about customers throughout the 27-nation bloc. Irish authorities mentioned the Chinese language authorities, beneath its antiterrorism and anti-espionage legal guidelines, may have gained entry to these customers’ information.
TikTok, which has about 175 million customers throughout Europe, mentioned in a press release that it complies with European Union legal guidelines. The corporate has “by no means acquired a request for European person information from the Chinese language authorities, and has by no means supplied European person information to them,” TikTok mentioned.
TikTok mentioned it deliberate to attraction the choice, a transfer that might arrange a yearslong court docket battle between it and the Irish authorities, which is TikTok’s important regulator in Europe. TikTok’s European headquarters are in Eire, and its authorities is charged with implementing the Common Knowledge Safety Regulation.
TikTok mentioned the Irish Knowledge Safety Fee didn’t account for a 2023 initiative to spend 12 billion euros to fence in information of customers contained in the European Union. The undertaking included development of a knowledge middle in Finland.
“This ruling dangers setting a precedent with far-reaching penalties for firms and whole industries throughout Europe that function on a worldwide scale,” TikTok mentioned in a press release.
On Friday, Irish regulators mentioned that final month, TikTok mentioned it had found a “restricted” quantity of person information had been saved on servers inside China after it had repeatedly denied doing so.
European customers weren’t “afforded a stage of safety primarily equal to that assured inside the E.U.,” Graham Doyle, deputy commissioner of the Irish Knowledge Safety Fee, mentioned in a press release.
