The U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, charging they’ve violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by allowing children to create TikTok accounts without parental consent, and collecting their data. The suit also alleges TikTok retained the personal data of minors who joined prior to COPPA going into effect in 2000, even after parents demanded it be deleted, a right under COPPA. This latest move in the ongoing legal battle with ByteDance follows the Chinese company’s own lawsuit against the U.S. government.

The complaint filed Friday in federal court for the Central District of California indicates that in addition to violating COPPA, the Bytedance transgressed a 2019 agreement with the Federal Trade Commission that mandated the social media giant alert parents prior to collecting data from their children and to remove videos from those under 13.

TikTok’s alleged data retention includes email addresses, phone numbers and location data, including for young users.

“Despite offering a ‘Kids Mode’ for users under the age of 13, TikTok has still ‘knowingly allowed children under 13 to create accounts in the regular TikTok experience and collected extensive personal information from those children without first providing parental notice or obtaining verifiable parental consent,” CNN writes, quoting the civil lawsuit, which seeks fines, a permanent injunction and a jury trial.

This latest salvo from the U.S. seeks to “put an end to TikTok’s unlawful massive-scale invasions of children’s privacy,” according to the complaint, which comes on the heels of a lawsuit by ByteDance and TikTok filed in May in federal court in the District of Columbia. That suit, attacking a new law requiring ByteDance to divest of TikTok by January 19, 2025 or see it banned from U.S. app stores, argues the law is unconstitutional.

The bill, which invokes national security concerns, was signed into law by President Biden on April 24. A group of 21 states and 50-plus U.S. lawmakers on Friday went public with their support of the DOJ and the April law.

“‘TikTok is a threat to national security and consumer privacy,’ said a court filing led by the state attorneys general of Montana and Virginia,” Reuters reports, going on to quote from the document that “Allowing TikTok to operate in the United States without severing its ties to the Chinese Communist Party exposes Americans to the risk of the Chinese Communist Party accessing and exploiting their data.”

The New York Times, which says TikTok claims 170 million U.S users, quotes a spokesman for the company disagreeing with the allegations and asserting “we are proud of our efforts to protect children, and we will continue to update and improve the platform.”

Related:
TikTok Pulls Program EU Warned Could Make Kids App Addicts, Bloomberg, 8/5/24