Regulators said that the EU has fined TikTok 530 million euros (around $600 million). Chinese tech giant ByteDance owns TikTok, which has been found guilty of illegally sending the private data of EU users to China and lack of compliance to ensure the protection of data from potential access by Chinese authorities. According to an AFP news report, the penalty— one of the largest ever issued to date by EU’s data protection agencies— comes after a detailed inquiry into the legitimacy of TikTok’s data transfer rules.
TikTok Fine and EU
TikTok’s lead regulator in Europe, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) said that TikTok accepted during the probe about hosting European user data in China. DPC’s deputy commissioner Graham Doyle said that “TikTok failed to verify, guarantee, and demonstrate that the personal data of (European) users, remotely accessed by staff in China, was afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EU,”
Besides this, Doyle said that TikTok’s failure to address the dangers of possible access to Europeans’s private data by Chinese authorities under China’s anti-terrorism, counter-espionage, and other regulations, which TikTok itself found different than EU’s data protection standards.
TikTok will contest the decision
TikTok has declared to contest the heavy EU fine, despite the findings. TikTok Europe’s Christine Grahn stressed that the company has “never received a request” from authorities in China for European users’ data and that “TikTok” has never given EU users’ data to Chinese authorities. “We disagree with this decision and intend to appeal it in full,” Christine said.
TikTok boasts a massive 1.5 billion users worldwide. In recent years, the social media platform has been under tough pressure from Western governments due to worries about the misuse of data by Chinese actors for surveillance and propaganda aims.
TikTok to comply with EU Rules
In 2023, the Ireland DPC fined TikTok 354 million euros for violating EU rules related to the processing of children’s information. The DPC’s recent judgment also revealed that TikTok violated requirements under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by sending user data to China. The decision includes a 530 million euro administrative penalty plus a mandate that TikTok aligns its data processing rules with EU practices within 6 months.
