The US Department of Justice is suing TikTok for violating a child privacy law and breaching a 2019 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission related to previous privacy violations. This legal action follows an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, which passed on its findings to the DoJ earlier in the year. The investigation looked into potential violations of a previous privacy settlement between Musical.ly and ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. The FTC discovered that TikTok had blatantly violated both the 2019 settlement and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting and retaining personal information from children without parental consent. Despite TikTok’s statements to the contrary, the Justice Department alleges that the company failed to comply with requests to delete this data and had inadequate procedures for identifying and removing accounts created by children. This lawsuit coincides with a challenging period for TikTok, as the company faces legal battles over potential bans and asset sales in federal court next month.
