TikTok Agrees to $400 Million Settlement in U.S. Child Privacy Lawsuit

Summary: The U.S. Department of Justice announced that ByteDance-owned TikTok will pay $400 million to settle a 2024 lawsuit accusing it of violating U.S. child privacy laws, with $300 million due immediately and $100 million upon entry of an order vacating a prior consent decree against TikTok's predecessor Musical.ly. The August 2024 complaint, filed alongside the FTC, alleged that TikTok knowingly allowed children under 13 to create accounts, unlawfully collected data from users in Kids Mode, and failed to comply with parents' requests to delete their children's accounts and information.
Key Takeaway: The DoJ called this one of the largest recoveries ever under COPPA, and it follows a €345 million GDPR fine against TikTok in September 2023 over its handling of children's personal data - a reminder that data collected from minors is a recurring, multi-jurisdiction liability, not a one-time enforcement event.

Read the original at The Hacker News ↗