The US Justice Department says TikTok and ByteDance have agreed to a 400-million-dollar settlement to resolve litigation that the video sharing app violated children’s online privacy.
The Justice Department said on Friday that since the lawsuit was filed against TikTok in 2024, the company has implemented measures to strengthen safeguards for younger users, improve age-related controls and enhance parental oversight.
The defendants had been accused of gathering a range of personal information from children, including their email addresses, without permission from their parents. The department said a federal law prohibits website operators from collecting and using personal information from children under the age of 13 without parental consent.
The department also said that when parents asked TikTok to delete the accounts and the information they contained, the operator frequently failed to meet their requests. It also said TikTok’s internal policies to handle the issue were deficient and ineffectual.
The Justice Department says the settlement with TikTok will ensure “American families continue to benefit from stronger protections without the delay and uncertainty of protracted litigation.”