{"id":24721,"date":"2024-06-20T02:10:10","date_gmt":"2024-06-20T10:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2024\/06\/20\/news-18451\/"},"modified":"2024-06-20T02:10:10","modified_gmt":"2024-06-20T10:10:10","slug":"news-18451","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2024\/06\/20\/news-18451\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok facing fresh lawsuit in US over children’s privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced<\/a> it’s referred a complaint against TikTok and parent company ByteDance to the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

The investigation originally focused on Musical.ly which was acquired by ByteDance on November 10, 2017, and merged it into TikTok.<\/p>\n

The FTC started a compliance review of Musical.ly following a 2019 settlement<\/a> with the company for violations of the Children\u2019s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In the settlement, Musical.ly received a fine of $5.7m for collecting personal information from children without parental consent.<\/p>\n

One of the main concerns was that Musical.ly did not ask the user\u2019s age and later failed to go back and request age information for people who already had accounts.<\/p>\n

COPPA requires sites and services like Musical.ly and TikTok \u2013 among other things \u2013 to get parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13.<\/p>\n

Musical.ly also failed to deal with complaints properly. The FTC found that\u2014in just a two-week period in September 2016\u2014the company received over 300 complaints from parents asking Musical.ly to delete their child\u2019s account. However, under COPPA it\u2019s not enough just to delete existing accounts, companies have to remove the kids\u2019 videos and profiles from the company\u2019s servers; Musical.ly failed to do this.<\/p>\n

In 2022, TikTok itself faced a $28m fine for failing to protect children\u2019s privacy after an investigation of a possible breach of the UK\u2019s data protection laws.<\/p>\n

In the US, TikTok agreed to pay $92 million<\/a> in 2021 to settle dozens of lawsuits alleging that it harvested personal data from users, including information using facial recognition technology, without consent, and shared the data with third parties.<\/p>\n

The FTC states that during the investigation it uncovered reasons to believe that \u201cdefendants are violating or are about to violate the law and that a proceeding is in the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The FTC also said it usually doesn\u2019t publicize the referral of complaints but feels it is in the public interest to do so now.<\/p>\n

TikTok has been in the crosshairs of privacy and security professionals and politicians for years.<\/p>\n

In June 2022,  the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), called on the CEOs of Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores<\/a> considering it an unacceptable national security risk because of its Chinese ownership.<\/p>\n

In 2023, General Paul Nakasone, Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) referred to TikTok as a loaded gun in the hands of America\u2019s TikTok-addicted youth.<\/p>\n

Recently, we reported about the take-over of some high-profile TikTok accounts<\/a> just by opening a Direct Message.<\/p>\n

And the clock is ticking when it comes to TikTok\u2019s presence in the US, after the US Senate has approved a bill that would effectively ban TikTok from the US<\/a> unless Chinese owner ByteDance gives up its share of the still immensely popular app.<\/p>\n

Somehow we don’t think we’ve heard the last of this.<\/p>\n

Check your digital footprint<\/h2>\n

Malwarebytes has a new free tool for you to check how much of your personal data has been exposed online. Submit your email address (it\u2019s best to give the one you most frequently use) to our free Digital Footprint scan and we\u2019ll give you a report and recommendations.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>SCAN NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FTC has referred a complaint against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance to the Department of Justice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[26858,21172,10665,32,5897,21168],"class_list":["post-24721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-bytedance","tag-coppa","tag-ftc","tag-news","tag-privacy","tag-tiktok"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}