In a lawsuit filed on Friday, the US Justice Department said that TikTok had failed to prevent minors from using the app and had improperly gathered their personal information.
TikTok and its parent business, ByteDance, are being sued for allegedly breaking the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by permitting minors to register for accounts without their parents’ awareness or approval.
The lawsuit claims that TikTok also gathers and keeps track of children’s personal information, including phone numbers, email addresses, and location data, and that it disobeys parental requests to remove their children’s data.
The action on Friday is a result of a 2019 settlement reached by TikTok and the US Federal Trade Commission to resolve claims that the latter unlawfully obtained personal data from minors.
The settlement mandated that the business implement particular COPPA compliance measures. According to the Justice Department, TikTok has persisted in breaking the 2019 court order and the law.
The complaint, filed in district court in California, claims that TikTok has “knowingly allowed children under 13 to create accounts in the regular TikTok experience and collected extensive personal information from those children without first providing parental notice or obtaining verifiable parental consent,” despite offering a “Kids Mode” for users under the age of 13.
This case is the most recent investigation into the well-known short-form video app, which is also involved in a legal dispute on a bill that may lead to the app’s prohibition in the US. In the past, TikTok has also been accused of failing to ensure the safety of its younger users and has been punished in Europe for infringing on children’s right to privacy.
Earlier this year, sources told CNN that the FTC had started looking into possible COPPA violations by TikTok. The Federal Trade Commission sent the matter to the Justice Department, which then filed the case on Friday.
FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement on Friday that “TikTok knowingly and repeatedly violated kids’ privacy, threatening the safety of millions of children across the country.”
“We disagree with these allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes stated. “We are proud of our efforts to protect children, and we will continue to update and improve the platform. To that end, we offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched features such as default screentime limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors.”
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However, the complaint filed on Friday contends that TikTok hasn’t gone far enough to guarantee that kids younger than 13 are kept off the program.
The lawsuit asserts, among other things, that TikTok did not stop a child from trying again with a different birthdate “even though by that point (TikTok) knew from the birthday the user had previously provided that the user was a child” if the child tried to sign up for an account but was rejected after submitting a birthdate showing they were under 13.
The lawsuit further claims that TikTok “failed to create a simple process for parents to submit a deletion request” for the child’s data, calling the deletion procedure “convoluted,” even in the event that a parent found their child’s account.
Furthermore, it states that TikTok “often did not honor” requests from parents, even if they were submitted. The DOJ is suing to obtain a court order and monetary fines to stop any further COPPA violations.
