TikTok App Company Agrees to $5.7 Million Settlement Under Children’s Privacy Law

This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.

Does your child have the TikTok app downloaded to a cell phone? If so, your child could have provided the company with personal information, including your address, an email address and a photo of your child.

The operators of TikTok have reached a $5.7 million settlement to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allegations the company collected personal information from children under the age of 13 without parental consent. The FTC claimed this collection violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

“The operators of Musical.ly—now known as TikTok—knew many children were using the app but they still failed to seek parental consent before collecting names, email addresses, and other personal information from users under the age of 13,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons in a press release. “This record penalty should be a reminder to all online services and websites that target children: We take enforcement of COPPA very seriously, and we will not tolerate companies that flagrantly ignore the law.”

TikTok App Popular with Children

TikTok has been downloaded more than one billion times around the world, and approximately 65 million accounts are registered in the United States, according to data provided by Sensor Tower. 

The app, which is available in 34 languages, purportedly has a user default setting that enables information provided by the user to be seen by the public; the settings in the account must be manually switched to private, which few children either know to do or bother to do.

TikTok allows users to create short 15-second videos in which they lip-sync to comedy clips or music. Up to four videos can be strung together to create a 60-second clip. The videos are then shareable with other people who have the TikTok app downloaded.

Per the FTC settlement, TikTok must delete the videos created by children under 13 years old. Additionally, TikTok announced it was launching a separate platform to split age groups in order to ensure inappropriate material is not shared with or shared by underaged persons.

The FTC warned that it had received many reports of adults attempting to contact children through the Musical.ly (TikTok) app. Up until October 2016, the app included an option for the users to add their location as specific as “my city” that enabled the user to find other users within a 50-mile radius. Direct messaging was possible with those users.

Even though kids find TikTok to be a fun distraction, child predators have reportedly used it for hunting grounds. Technology website Motherboard allegedly discovered a group of adult users trying to convince children to send nude photos and attempting to send inappropriate videos to children.

Parents of teens and pre-teens see the FTC’s record-breaking settlement with TikTok as a way to strengthen their position to file a class action lawsuit against the company for allegedly endangering their children.

Musical.ly was founded in 2014 by a company in Shanghai, China that had offices in Santa Monica, Calif. In November 2017, Bytedance bought out Musical.ly and all of the accounts became TikTok accounts.

The TikTok website currently has a statement asking anyone under the age of 13 not to use the app.

Join a Free Musical.ly Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If your child opened a Muscical.ly account and is 13 or younger, you may qualify to join this Musical./ly class action lawsuit investigation.

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