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US sues TikTok and China’s ByteDance, claiming they failed to protect children’s privacy
- Popular short-video platform accused of violating law by collecting personal information from kids under 13 without parental permission
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Bochen Hanin Washington
In the latest legal action confronting TikTok, the US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission filed a civil suit on Friday against the short-video app and its Chinese parent company ByteDance, claiming they failed to protect children’s privacy.
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The government said TikTok, which boasts about 170 million US users, violated a law that forbids using, collecting or disclosing personal information from children under the age of 13 without parental permission.
The DoJ said TikTok knowingly allowed children to create regular accounts on the app and retained their personal information, such as email addresses, without parental consent and frequently failed to honour account-deletion requests from parents.
In 2019, the government sued TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly, for violating the same law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and its implementing regulations.
Since then, the DoJ said, TikTok has been subject to a court order requiring it to take actions to comply.
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