The video-sharing social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance, TikTok was allegedly accused of involving in alleged privacy violations, where the company was said to collects highly sensitive personal data that aids to track users and target ads to them.
However, as of today, TikTok has agreed to pay $92 million for the settlements that combine 21 proposed class-action lawsuits against TikTok over an assortment of alleged privacy violations.
The settlement is over a nationwide privacy lawsuit, where the lawsuit claims, from allegations that TikTok analyzed users’ faces to determine their ethnicity, gender, and age to supposed violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act over its transmission of private data.
In agreement with this settlement, TikTok has agreed to avoid behaviors that could compromise user privacy unless it specifically discloses those behaviors in its privacy policy. This includes storing biometric information, collecting GPS or clipboard data, and sending or storing US users’ data outside the country.
TikTok sent a statement to TheVerge, “While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community,”
And this is not the first time TikTok has been involved in such lawsuits/settlements, in 2019, the company failed to gain parental approval for young users with its predecessor, Musical.ly, and paid $5.7 million to the Federal Trade Commission.
In the same year, TikTok also settled a lawsuit of $1.1 million over an alleged children’s privacy allegation. With this new settlement, almost all US users would be included. However, with this new settlement, almost all US users would be included.