U.S. Lawmakers Urge the Federal Trade Commission to Investigate a Popular Video App Over Alleged Repeated Privacy Violations

Several Senators and members of the U.S. House of Representatives urged the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into allegations that the popular video app TikTok violated a 2019 consent decree with the FTC over its violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

COPPA applies to operators of commercial websites and online services directed at children under 13 years old and operators of general websites or online services with actual knowledge that they are collecting, using, or disclosing personal information from children under 13 years old.  COPPA generally requires companies that collect personal information from children under the age of 13 to provide notice of their data collection and use practices and obtain verifiable parental consent.

In February of 2019, the FTC entered into a consent order with Musical.ly (which subsequently merged into TikTok) where the company agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle allegations that it failed to notify parents about the app’s collection and use of personal information from users under 13, obtain parental consent before such collection and use, and delete personal information at the request of parents. This was the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the Commission in a children’s privacy case.  In addition to the monetary payment, the settlement required the app’s operators to comply with COPPA going forward and to take offline all videos made by children under the age of 13.

In their letter to the FTC, the legislators cited a report by the Center for Digital Democracy, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and others alleging that TikTok had failed to take down videos made by children under age of 13 and failed to provide parents with a “direct notice” of data practices before collecting information on children and did not put a link to its privacy policy on its home page, as required by COPPA.  The FTC can seek civil penalties in federal court for violation of its consent orders.

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