Joint Investigation into TikTok finds abuses with Personal Information of Children – Canadian Privacy Commissioners

The OPC website reports:  A joint investigation into TikTok by Privacy Commissioner of Canada Philippe Dufresne and provincial counterparts in Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta has found that the measures in place to keep children off the popular video-sharing platform and to prevent the collection and use of their sensitive personal information for profiling and targeting purposes were inadequate.

The investigation found that TikTok collected and used the personal information of hundreds of thousands of children in Canada.  This information was used to target advertising directly to them.  Often this information was collected without knowledge or consent.

In Quebec for example, 40% of children aged 6 to 17 have a TikTok account.  Half a million accounts in Canada belong to children, and the number grows each day – one child every minute. 

TikTok has admitted the problem and promises to do better.