The UK Information Commissioner's Office announced today, Tuesday, that it has imposed a fine of £12.7 million ($15.88 million) on TikTok due to multiple violations of data protection law, including the use of personal data of children under 13 years old without parental consent.

The office stated that the video application owned by the Chinese company "ByteDance" did not take adequate measures to verify the identity of platform users and to remove users who are underage children.

As previously, the UK Information Commissioner's Office found that the video-sharing platform may have processed data of children under 13 years old without their parents' consent, and it even failed to provide appropriate information to its users in a concise, transparent, and easily understandable manner.

The office said the breach took place over more than two years until July 2020.

In response, TikTok said it disagrees with the findings of the investigation.

Underage:

According to the investigation, TikTok allowed about 1.4 million children in the UK to use the app even though they were under the legal age in the UK, which is thirteen years old.

44% of children aged eight to 12 years in the UK use TikTok, according to the government communications regulator "Ofcom," despite the platform’s policies banning use by those under 13 years old.

The UK data protection law also requires parental consent for the use of any personal data relating to children under 13 years old.

Enhancing privacy:

On its part, TikTok has launched several features to enhance privacy and security on the site, including allowing parents to link their accounts to their children, and disabling direct messaging for those under 16 years old.

The Children’s Code was introduced in September last year, setting new practice rules to protect data for online services likely to be accessed by children, based on existing data protection laws, with financial penalties for potential serious breaches.

Record fine:

In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission imposed a record fine of $5.7 million on the company for mishandling children’s data.

The platform was also fined in South Korea for similar reasons.

In July, the Senate Commerce Committee voted to approve a measure that would raise the age for granting children special online privacy protection to 16 years old, and ban targeted advertising to children without consent.