TikTok is under investigation by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), its main regulator in the EU, for two privacy-related issues. The watchdog is investigating the processing of children’s personal data and whether TikTok complies with EU laws on the transfer of personal data to other countries, such as China.
TikTok declared that privacy was “our highest priority”. The Irish DPC claimed that it was specifically investigating GDPR-related issues. These are EU privacy laws that can potentially lead to huge fines of up to 4% of a company’s global turnover.
Furthermore, the DPC said that the first investigation would examine “the processing of personal data … for users under 18 years of age and verification measures age for persons under the age of 13. “It will also analyze how transparent TikTok has been about how it processes such data.