TikTok has been fined $600 million by the European Union’s (EU) data protection watchdog over concerns about its handling of user data in the bloc, according to an official statement.
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) says that TikTok failed to show sufficient evidence that handling of personal data of EU users was compliant with the strict protection standards under the EU’s data privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
In November 2022, the Chinese tech conglomerate, ByteDance, which owns TikTok, revealed that some of its employees could access personal data of EU users. The disclosure led to a wave of apprehensions in both the EU and the United States (US), where TikTok had already been facing high regulatory scrutiny for its data handling practices.
“TikTok’s personal data transfers to China infringed the GDPR because TikTok failed to verify, guarantee and demonstrate that the personal data of EEA users, remotely accessed by staff in China, was afforded a level of protection essentially equivalent to that guaranteed within the EU,” says DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle.
TikTok did not address potential access by Chinese authorities to the personal data of users based in the European Economic Area (EEA) under the Chinese anti-terrorism, counter-espionage and other laws, which the platform itself identified as materially diverging from EU standards, the commissioner adds.
TikTok, on the other hand, has vehemently opposed the DPC’s decision. “This ruling risks setting a precedent with far-reaching consequences for companies and entire industries across Europe that operate on a global scale,” the company has stated.
The company argues that the ruling does not adequately take into account the security measures it implemented in 2023, including independent oversight of remote access and the storage of EU user data in specialised data centers, under its initiative called “Project Clover”, located in Europe.
In 2023, TikTok was fined $370 million by the watchdog, which accused the short-video platform of violating rules related to the processing of underage users in the EU.
TikTok has around 175 million users in the EU.
