Security News > 2023 > September > TikTok Faces Massive €345 Million Fine Over Child Data Violations in E.U.

The Irish Data Protection Commission slapped TikTok with a €345 million fine for violating the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation in relation to its handling of children's data.

The investigation, initiated in September 2021, examined how the popular short-form video platform processed personal data relating to child users between July 31 and December 31, 2020.

The content posted by child users was set to public by default, thereby allowing any individual to view the material and exposing them to additional risks.

A weakness in the Family Sharing setting that allowed any non-child user to pair their account to that of a minor's, which made it possible for the adult user to enable direct messages for child users above the age of 16.

TikTok has about 134 million monthly users in the E.U. TikTok was previously handed out a €5 million fine by the French data protection watchdog in January 2023 for breaking cookie consent rules and for making the opt-out mechanism more complex than opting-in.

The development arrives days after California's Attorney General announced that Google would fork out $93 million to settle a privacy lawsuit alleging it violated the U.S. state's consumer protection laws by collecting users' location data for consumer profiling and advertising purposes without informed consent.

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https://thehackernews.com/2023/09/tiktok-faces-massive-345-million-fine.html