DOJ Accuses Chinese-Owned TikTok Of Illegally Collecting Children’s Data In Lawsuit

The Department of Justice (DOJ) accused TikTok and its Chinese parent company of illegally collecting kids’ data in a lawsuit filed in a federal court on Friday.

The DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleged that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, broke a 2019 agreement with the FTC by continuing to scoop up the data of millions of children under the age of 13 without parental permission and not carrying out parents’ requests to delete data in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The federal government is alleging that TikTok violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)

“According to the complaint, from 2019 to the present, TikTok knowingly permitted children to create regular TikTok accounts and to create, view, and share short-form videos and messages with adults and others on the regular TikTok platform. The defendants collected and retained a wide variety of personal information from these children without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents,” the DOJ said of its lawsuit. “Even for accounts that were created in ‘Kids Mode’ (a pared-back version of TikTok intended for children under 13), the defendants unlawfully collected and retained children’s email addresses and other types of personal information. Further, when parents discovered their children’s accounts and asked the defendants to delete the accounts and information in them, the defendants frequently failed to honor those requests.”

TikTok, meanwhile, disputes the allegations in the DOJ’s complaint, with spokesperson Alex Haurek telling Politico that many of the government’s accusations “relate to past events and practices” that were not accurate or were handled. In 2019, the federal government sued Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor, for violating COPPA, and TikTok has been under a court order requiring the company to take specific actions to comply with COPPA since then, according to the DOJ.

“We are proud of our efforts to protect children and we will continue to update and improve the platform,” Haurek told Politico over email.

Congress voted in April to require ByteDance, a Chinese firm, to sell TikTok or otherwise have it banned in the U.S., and the company is fighting the law in an ongoing legal battle. While TikTok insists that it is not controlled or otherwise servile to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a former senior ByteDance employee has stated that CCP members inside the company have “superuser” credentials and a “backdoor channel” to access American users’ data, while the app often promotes content for users that is aligned with the CCP’s agenda, according to a recent study by Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University.

Additionally, officials from the Chinese embassy reportedly lobbied directly against the forced divestiture bill on Capitol Hill after the House passed it.

The DOJ also alleged on July 27 that the app has been aggregating data from American users regarding their views on political issues like abortion and gun control. In that complaint, the federal government asserted that the app poses a “potential threat to U.S. national security.”

TikTok did not respond immediately to a request for comment, and the DOJ referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to its press release when contacted for comment.