South Korea Fines TikTok for Mismanaging Children’s Data

South Korea has fined Video-sharing platform TikTok for mismanaging children’s data, as concerns continue to grow about users’ privacy.

TikTok was fined 186m won (£123,000) by the country’s media regulatory body, Korea Communications Commission (KCC).

The KCC said that TikTok collected data of children under 14 years old without the consent of legal guardians.

The country’s media watchdog expressed great concern and said it was “deeply committed” to meeting the requirements of the law. The fine is roughly 3% of the social media platform’s yearly revenue.

An investigation had been initiated last year by the regulators who discovered more than  6,000 records involving children were collected over six months, violating local privacy laws.

KCC also reported that the Chinese firm failed to brief users that personal data was transferred overseas.

A TikTok spokesperson said.”We hold ourselves to very high standards on data privacy, and work to continuously improve and strengthen our standards.”

This news comes a week after the United States said it was considering banning Chinese social media app, including TikTok.

Last year, the Musical.ly app (which was later acquired and incorporated into TikTok) was hammered with a record fine of $5.7m (£4.3m) for not protecting children’s data privacy in the United States.

The Federal Trade Commission said the platform knowingly hosted content published by underage users.

The app which has swum in troubled waters lately was banned in India last month due to rising tensions with China over disputed borders and earlier this month, it announced that it was exiting the Hong Kong market after the enforcement of new security laws by China.