In September, the Irish Data Protection Commission decided to award 345 million euros to the popular app TikTok. EUR fine for inadequate protection of children's data. As experts say, other social media platforms to which minors have access should also pay attention to such decisions of institutions.
The TikTok platform was fined for several reasons. The first one, which is named by the partner of the TGS Baltic law firm, Mindaugas Civilka, head of the Technology Industry Group, is that in 13-17 years. users were automatically prompted to create public accounts. "This means that information such as likes, uploaded content, tags and the ability to contact children in the comment and private message sections were not only available to other users of the app, but also to those who did not have accounts," explains the lawyer.
Also, if you decided to change your public account settings to private, there would be messages telling you not to do so. In the settings, it was also necessary to look for the possibility to limit the visibility of uploaded videos, receiving comments and private messages.
"Breaches were also found with family settings. Parents were able to connect their accounts with their children, manage them, limit access to messages, as well as the visibility of uploaded content and even change the settings of the child's account from private to public, but the data protection commission found that there was not enough control over such a family setting, i.e. it was not determined that the account is really supervised by a person related to the child", says M. Civilka.
The technology industry expert adds that the fining authority also cited insufficient authentication and age verification of persons under the age of 13. According to the lawyer, it was basically limited to the user's own confirmation that he has reached the age of 13, the minimum age from which the platform can be used.
"The Irish Data Protection Commission was also included in the decision by the German regulatory authority's conclusion that the app uses various behavior and design methods (English "dark patterns") intended to influence users' choices on the Internet, in violation of GDPR principles," adds M. Civilka.
The problem is also relevant for others
TikTok was given 3 months to make all the necessary changes. It is true that the company itself does not agree with such a decision of the data protection authority and announces that old problems, which started to be solved back in 2020, were examined. TikTok representatives say they will make even more sweeping changes and change the default privacy settings for 16-17 year olds as well.
"The problems that TikTok is facing today are relevant to all other similar social media platforms as well. in 2022 405 million in September The "Meta" platform was also fined EUR for insufficient protection of children's data. She got in the way because of the automatically suggested creation of public accounts and publicly published e-mail. mail in children's business accounts", says M. Civilka.
According to him, age verification of individuals in social media, games and digital content has always been a sensitive issue. "On most platforms, users self-declare their age and platform managers tend to just close their eyes and pretend not to know that in reality it is extremely easy to bypass such restrictions. True, some use methods that help identify minors from their behavior on the platform and block such accounts. But again, such monitoring of the behavior of minors is hardly justified," says the partner of TGS Baltic.
According to the lawyer, some social networks also require parental consent or approval, for example by sending a link to their account. "Of course, such measures can also be easily bypassed, similar to the case of TikTok's family settings. This shows that, at least for now, we do not have a reliable and safe way to limit the behavior of minors on the Internet," adds M. Civilka.
It is hoped that this decision by the Irish Data Protection Commission to impose a fine for inadequate protection of children's data will encourage other platforms to find ways and invest more in child protection.
