The Chinese-owned social media site TikTok could face a £27 million ($29 million) fine after British authorities found that it may have breached UK data protection law by failing to protect children’s privacy.
On Monday, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said in a statement that the video-sharing platform may have processed the data of under-13s without appropriate parental consent.
The ICO investigation also found that TikTok may have failed to provide proper information to its users “in a concise, transparent and easily understood way,” and “processed special category data, without legal grounds to do so.”
Authorities issued the company with a “notice of intent,” a legal document that precedes a potential fine. Its provisional view is that TikTok breached UK data protection law between May 2018 and July 2020….