TikTok has been penalized with a fine of €345m for breaching children’s data privacy.

TikTok has been fined €345m (£296m) by Irish regulators for breaching the privacy of children.

The complaint was related to the manner in which the social media application managed the data of minors in the year 2020, specifically regarding age verification and privacy preferences.

This is the largest penalty that TikTok has ever received from regulators.

The social media company’s spokesperson expressed their respectful disagreement with the decision, especially regarding the amount of the imposed fine.

They stated that the criticisms revolve around features and settings that were implemented three years ago. However, they made changes to these features well in advance of the investigation, such as automatically setting all accounts for individuals under the age of 16 to private.

The fine was issued by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy law.

Companies are obligated to adhere to the regulations outlined in GDPR when managing data.

The DPC discovered that TikTok lacked transparency in informing children about its privacy settings and expressed concerns regarding the processing of their data.

An ongoing investigation is being conducted to determine if TikTok has unlawfully transferred data from the European Union to China. TikTok is currently owned by ByteDance, a company based in Beijing.

Although the fine amounts to hundreds of millions, it is comparatively smaller than other recent penalties. For instance, Meta was subjected to a €1.2bn (£1bn) fine by the regulator in May for mishandling individuals’ data during its transfer between Europe and the United States.

It is however substantially larger than the £12.7m fine TikTok was issued by the UK data watchdog in April for allowing children aged under 13 to use the platform in 2020.

The penalty imposed by the DPC pertains specifically to the year 2020, and TikTok implemented various measures in the subsequent years to enhance its compliance.

In January 2021, this action made it one of the initial social media platforms to automatically set the accounts of 13 to 15-year-olds as private.

Starting this month, there will be a modification implemented that automatically sets the accounts of all individuals aged 16 and 17 to private when they sign up on the platform.