TikTok investigated by UK watchdog over use of children’s data

The UK knowledge watchdog has launched what it calls a “main investigation” into TikTok’s use of kids’s private info.

The Info Commissioner’s Workplace (ICO) will examine the way in which during which the social media platform makes use of the information of 13 to 17-year-olds to suggest additional content material to them.

John Edwards, the Info Commissioner, stated it will take a look at whether or not TikTok’s knowledge assortment practices might result in youngsters experiencing harms, reminiscent of knowledge being leaked or spending “extra time than is wholesome” on the platform.

TikTok advised the BBC its recommender programs operated underneath “strict and complete measures that defend the privateness and security of teenagers”.

It added that the platform additionally has “sturdy restrictions on the content material allowed in teenagers’ feeds”.

Mr Edwards stated TikTok’s algorithm “feeds” on private knowledge gleaned from consumer profiles, preferences, hyperlinks clicked and the way lengthy they spend watching a selected video – making it topic to UK guidelines.

Along with the probe into TikTok, the ICO can be checking the age verification processes of Reddit and Imgur, an image-sharing platform.

The investigation will look into whether or not the businesses are complying with each the UK’s knowledge safety legal guidelines, and the youngsters’s code.

The code is ready to design ideas for on-line platforms aimed toward defending youngsters within the UK. Platforms which gather UK youngsters’s consumer knowledge should minimise the quantity they collect and take further care when processing it.

The ICO’s investigations into Reddit and Imgur will deal with how the platforms verify the ages of their customers and their enforcement of age checks.

Ofcom stated in October Reddit had overtaken X because the UK’s fifth hottest platform.

Imgur, in the meantime, says on its web site that it reaches greater than 250 million individuals a month. Nevertheless, it doesn’t state during which nations their customers are based mostly, so there isn’t a determine for the variety of individuals utilizing it within the UK.

“I do not wish to pre-judge how we would take a look at the Imgur and Reddit issues, but when there are age limits for accessing companies, then the platforms need to implement these in some methods,” the Info Commissioner advised the BBC.

“There are a variety of various applied sciences and strategies which might be out there, I might say, and the diploma of rigor, I believe, relies upon partially upon the sorts of dangers, the chance that youngsters will likely be accessing these websites.

“I suppose a baseline can be: self-declaration might be not going to chop it if there may be content material on the location or companies on the location which might be unsuitable for youngsters underneath the age of 13.”

A Reddit spokesperson advised the BBC that 95% of their customers are adults however that they “have plans to roll out modifications this 12 months that tackle updates to UK rules round age assurance”.

Imgur has not responded to the BBC’s request for a remark.

The investigations don’t essentially imply any of the three platforms have damaged the regulation.

However corporations that are discovered to have accomplished so will be punished with enforcement notices and fines.

“We’re patrolling, and there will likely be penalties for breaches of the regulation,” stated Mr Edwards.

It’s not the primary time TikTok has confronted scrutiny from the ICO. The platform is interesting in opposition to an ICO fine of £12.7m in 2023 for misusing children’s data issued in 2023.