February 27, 2019

In the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the FTC in a privacy case for children under the age of 13, lip-synch video sharing app Musical.ly, now known as TikTok, has agreed to pay $5.7 million for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). According to the FTC, during the registration process, the app collected personal information from its largely underage users—including full name, contact information, and location—without parental approval. It further refused to delete personal information requested by parents, even though its privacy setting defaulted to public, which allowed unscrupulous adults to view personal information, follow, and send direct messages to underage users within a 50-mile radius of their location. As part of the settlement, Musical.ly must remove all videos made by children under the age of 13. FTC