Video sharing platform TikTok has been fined by a South Korea regulator for mishandling child data.
The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) has fined the company for 186 million won or roughly 155,000 US Dollars. The fine it has imposed on TikTok is due to the company failing to protect users’ private data, especially regarding its younger user demographic.
The fine is equivalent to 3% of the company’s annual sales in South Korea, an amount designated for such violations under local privacy laws. The investigation began last year in October, the KCC said.
The regulator said TikTok collected the data of children under the age of 14 without consent from their legal guardians.
A minimum of 6,007 pieces of child data was collected from 31 May 2017 to 6 December 2019, the watchdog said.
TikTok reportedly had 3.4 million users in South Korea as of December, and had been downloaded over 2 billion times globally as of the first quarter of this year, according to industry tracker Sensor Tower.
